Incremental Hemodialysis for Veterans in the First Year of Dialysis (IncHVets)
Recruiting · NCT05465044 · Interventional (participants receive a specific treatment) · Lead sponsor: VA Office of Research and Development
View the official record on ClinicalTrials.gov →Interventions studied
What this trial is about
In this pragmatic clinical trial, which will dovetail with Veterans' routine outpatient dialysis clinic visits in six VA medical centers, the investigators will study 252 Veterans with kidney disease who need to start dialysis treatment. If a Veteran is eligible for the study by making enough residual urine, he/she will have a 50% chance to be offered the usual three-times-per-week dialysis vs. twice-per-week dialysis that is gradually increased to three-times per- week over one year. The investigators will compare health-related quality of life, how long residual kidney function lasts, and other measures including safety in these two groups. By conducting this study, the investigators hope to understand 1) whether starting dialysis with less frequency is safe, effective, and can help Veterans and their care-partners to better cope with dialysis, and 2) if incremental dialysis can result in major cost benefits to the VA health care system, thus allowing more patients to stay in VA dialysis clinics vs. being transferred to outside clinics.
Who can take part
Inclusion criteria
- Adult Veterans diagnosed with ESRD and who will soon need chronic dialysis initiation or have initiated hemodialysis (HD) not longer than 8 weeks of the target randomization day in one of the six VA centers
- Meeting the incremental dialysis eligibility criteria in Table 4\* under the IncHVets Study Protocol
- Willingness to undergo the randomly assigned modality of 2x/week vs. 3x/week HD
- Willingness to attend the baseline and quarterly study tests in the dialysis unit or via telehealth as determined by study staff, which will mostly be parallel to the routine dialysis clinic visits
- Agreeable to receive monthly or more frequent reviews for and interviews, regardless of being assigned to the incremental or conventional dialysis group
- As shown in Table 4 of the INCHVETS Study protocol under incremental dialysis criteria, eligible subjects must have a urine output \>0.5 L/day (liters per day) and urea clearance (KRU) \>3 ml/min (milliliters per minute) and meet 5 or more of the 9 other incremental dialysis criteria, which are derived from the 2014 Incremental Dialysis Consensus paper (Kalantar-Zadeh et al. Twice-weekly and incremental hemodialysis treatment for initiation of kidney replacement therapy. Am J Kidney Dis. 2014 Aug;64(2):181-6. doi: 10.1053/j.ajkd.2014.04.019. PMID: 24840669 PMCID: PMC4111970)
Exclusion criteria
- Having a terminal illness with a life expectancy less than 6 months such as stage 4 metastatic cancer or having signed for hospice with life expectancy less than 6 months
- A serum potassium level \>6.0 mEq/L (milliequivalents per liter) during the 4 weeks prior to the study start
Where it is running
8 locations listed across 7 US states.
- VA Long Beach Healthcare System, Long Beach, CA - Long Beach, California, United States
- VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, West Los Angeles, CA - West Los Angeles, California, United States
- VA Connecticut Healthcare System West Haven Campus, West Haven, CT - West Haven, Connecticut, United States
- VA Boston Healthcare System Jamaica Plain Campus, Jamaica Plain, MA - Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- John D. Dingell VA Medical Center, Detroit, MI - Detroit, Michigan, United States
- New Mexico VA Health Care System, Albuquerque, NM - Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
- Manhattan Campus of the VA NY Harbor Healthcare System, New York, NY - New York, New York, United States
- Memphis VA Medical Center, Memphis, TN - Memphis, Tennessee, United States