Impact of peritoneal dialysis modality on patient and PD survival: A systematic review

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the effect of the peritoneal dialysis (PD) modality, automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), on all-cause mortality (ACM) and PD failure. Studies were identified in PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Weipu and Wanfang databases from database inception until April 1, 2021. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were based on the Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, and Study (PICOS) design. Adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were used to pool outcome estimates. Seventeen studies (more than 230,000 patients) were included. Our meta-analysis showed that compared with CAPD, APD demonstrated a significantly lower ACM risk (HR 0.87 [95% CI 0.77–0.99], p = 0.04), especially in studies involving an as-treated analysis (HR 0.75 [95% CI, 0.63–0.90], p = 0.00), published in Asia (HR 0.76 [95% CI, 0.67–0.86], p < 0.001) or Europe (HR 0.81 [95% CI, 0.74–0.89], p < 0.00), or published after 2012 (HR 0.82 [95% CI, 0.68–0.99], p = 0.04). However, APD was as effective as CAPD for PD survival (HR, 0.87 [95% CI, 0.75 to 1.00], p = 0.05 or HR, 0.90 [95% CI, 0.60 to 1.35], p = 0.61). Our results demonstrate a significant survival benefit for APD and provide evidence for increasing the global use of APD, especially in developing nations, where APD use has been hampered by a lack of reimbursement for care.