Urgent-Start Peritoneal Dialysis: A Chance for a New Beginning

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) remains greatly underutilized in the United States despite the widespread preference of home modalities among nephrologists and patients. A hemodialysis-centric model of end-stage renal disease care has perpetuated for decades due to a complex set of factors, including late end-stage renal disease referrals and patients who present to the hospital requiring urgent renal replacement therapy. In such situations, PD rarely is a consideration and patients are dialyzed through a central venous catheter, a practice associated with high infection and mortality rates. Recently, the term urgent-start PD has gained momentum across the nephrology community and has begun to change this status quo. It allows for expedited placement of a PD catheter and initiation of PD therapy within days. Several published case reports, abstracts, and poster presentations at national meetings have documented the initial success of urgent-start PD programs. From a wide experiential base, we discuss the multifaceted issues related to urgent-start PD implementation, methods to overcome barriers to therapy, and the potential impact of this technique to change the existing dialysis paradigm.