Watch our webinar on home dialysis in the context of Covid-19

The information in the GIRFT draft report is provisional and will be subject to change when the report is published.

On Wednesday 30^th September, the National Kidney Federation (NKF) hosted a webinar, discussing home dialysis during Covid-19.

Kirit Modi, president of the NKF, kicked-off the webinar, and he was followed by Dr Graham Lipkin, president of the Renal Association. Dr Lipkin gave an informative talk on how Covid-19 has impacted dialysis patients. His findings showed that the incidence rate of Covid-19 was higher for people dialysing in hospital that those dialysing at home.

Dr Lipkin also previewed a draft version of the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) report, which highlighted how effective home dialysis could be for both the patient and hospital.

Dr Nitin Kolhe, consultant nephrologist at the Royal Derby Hospital, then spoke about the prevalence of home dialysis in Derby, which has the highest rate of home dialysis in the country.

He shared the key ingredients to making home dialysis a success whilst praising the work of the home dialysis team in Derby.

John Roberts of Hope KPA and Jyoti Jadav gave a patients' perspective of home dialysis before Christine Price and NKF vice-chairman, Brian Child, spoke about being a carer of someone dialysing at home.

We are now starting a national campaign to increase home dialysis in the UK in the context of the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on patients who dialyse in a centre.

Data published by the UK Renal Registry, based on information up to Wednesday 7^th October 2020 in England, shows that 2,443 (11.8%) of in-centre home dialysis (ICHD) patients were infected by Covid-19 from a total 20,715 ICHD patients in the UK (end of 2018), and 550 (2.7%) died from it.

Similar figures for those who dialysed at home are 143 (3.3%) who were infected from a total of 4,306 patients who dialyse at home in the UK, and 50 (1.2%) who died. This shows that patients who dialysed at home were able to protect themselves significantly better from Covid-19, compared to those who dialysed in-centre. The NKF campaign will include sending letters to clinical leads of renal services in all centres and to all KPA chairs to request them to promote home dialysis.

Questions from the webinar

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