National Kidney Care Audit, Patient Transport Survey - 2010

Renal Replacement Therapy is a life-long treatment for patients with end stage kidney disease. It takes the form either of kidney transplantation or dialysis treatment. Patients can move from dialysis, to having a transplant, and back to dialysis if the kidney transplant fails (and the cycle can be repeated). Dialysis can be divided into two broad modalities: peritoneal dialysis and haemodialysis. Peritoneal dialysis is a home based therapy, usually administered by the patient with or without the help of a carer. Haemodialysis can also be performed at home, but the overwhelming majority of patients in the UK have their haemodialysis treatment in a dialysis unit. It is this latter group of patients, who have to travel to and from the dialysis unit for their treatment, who are the subject of this patient transport audit. NB - Figures on patient satisfaction in the Executive Summary (last bullet point, p7) were corrected on 14 October 2011 to correct an error in the reporting of these figures (whereby the 2008 comparator figure had incorrectly excluded a category of response). No other figures were affected.