Sites of Peripheral Artery Occlusive Disease as a Predictor for All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality in Chronic Hemodialysis

BACKGROUND: The ankle-brachial blood pressure (BP) index (ABI) not only indicates the presence of peripheral artery occlusive disease (PAOD) but predicts mortality in patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD). However, whether the site of PAOD can provide additional contribution to predicting mortality have not been investigated yet. Our primary objective was to determine the associations between the site of PAOD and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in chronic HD (CHD) patients. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted to evaluate 444 Taiwanese CHD patients between December 2006 and June 2013. The site of PAOD together with other explanatory variables such as demographic data, body mass index, a history of cardiovascular diseases, HD vintage, biochemical data, and cardiothoracic ratio (CTR) were assessed by the Cox proportional hazards regression model. RESULTS: The frequency of PAOD was 14.6% in both legs, 4.9% in the right side only, and 5.1% in the left side only. During the study period, 127 all-cause and 93 cardiovascular deaths occurred. PAOD site was found to have significant predictive power for all-cause mortality with the order of 3.04 (95% CI: 1.56-5.90) hazard ratio on the right side, 2.48 (95% CI: 1.27-4.82) on the left side, and 4.11 (95% CI: 2.76-6.13) on both sides. The corresponding figures for cardiovascular mortality were 3.81 (95% CI: 1.87-7.76) on the right side, 2.76 (95% CI: 1.30-5.82) on the left side, and 3.95 (95% CI: 2.45-6.36) on both sides. After adjustment for other explanatory variables, only right-sided PAOD still remained to have significant predictive power for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality and bilateral PAOD kept the significant association with all-cause mortality. CONCLUSIONS: The site of PAOD revealed various predictive powers for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in CHD patients and only right-sided PAOD remained an independent predictor for both types of mortality making allowance for relevant confounding factors.