Impact of chronic kidney disease on mortality: A nationwide cohort study

BACKGROUND: Mortality is higher in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) than in the general population, but little information is available on CKD-related mortality that is representative of the Korean population. Our objective was to investigate mortality risk in Korean patients with CKD. METHODS: We identified patients with incident CKD who had not undergone dialysis or kidney transplantation between January 1, 2003 and December 31, 2007 in Korea using the database of the Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort, and stratified the population into the following three groups: group 1 (n = 1,473), controls; group 2 (n = 2,212), patients with diabetes or hypertension, but without CKD; and group 3 (n = 2,212), patients with CKD. We then monitored them for all-cause mortality until December 2013. CONCLUSION: In this nationally representative sample cohort, excess mortality was observed in Korean patients with incident CKD.