Treatment of End-Stage Renal Disease

To the Editors: Your editorial in the October 23 issue stated that variations in dialysis rates among states demonstrate that different criteria are being used to determine the need for dialysis in different parts of this country. To explore an alternative hypothesis, we examined death rates for renal disease in periods before implementation of the End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) program (1973). In 1970 the death rate for nephritis and nephrosis was found to have approximately the same variance and was positively correlated across states with the 1979 dialysis rate, although the correlation coefficient (r = 0.12) was not statistically . . .