SERUM ALBUMIN LEVELS AND ALL-CAUSE MORTALITY IN PREVALENT PERITONEAL DIALYSIS PATIENTS

Background and objectives: There are few studies to examine the long-term effect of serum albumin levels on mortality in prevalent peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. We investigated the association of serum albumin levels with mortality over a 5-year period. Methods: This study included 302 patients who received maintenance PD in a hospital-facilitated PD center. Five-year medical records (2011-2015) were retrospectively reviewed, and the cutoff level for serum albumin level was set at 3.5 g/dL. To examine the association between serum albumin levels and mortality, we used time-averaged albumin level and serum albumin reach rate to 3.5 g/dL in the first 2 years (2011-2012) as the predictor variables and all-cause mortality in the subsequent 3 years (2013-2015) as outcome variables. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to examine the hazard function of the all-cause mortality of the study participants. Results: Although the patients with 75-