Four steps to standardize reporting of peritoneal dialysis technique failure: A proposed approach

Technique failure is an important outcome measure in research and quality improvement in peritoneal dialysis (PD) programs, but there is a lack of consistency in how it is reported.We used data collected about incident dialysis patients from 10 Canadian dialysis programs between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2018. We identified four main steps that are required when calculating the risk of technique failure. We changed one variable at a time, and then all steps, simultaneously, to determine the impact on the observed risk of technique failure at 24 months.A total of 1448 patients received PD. Selecting different cohorts of PD patients changed the observed risk of technique failure at 24 months by 2%. More than one-third of patients who switched to hemodialysis returned to PD-90% returned within 180 days. The use of different time windows of observation for a return to PD resulted in risks of technique failure that differed by 16%. The way in which exit events were handled during the time window impacted the risk of technique failure by 4% and choice of statistical method changed results by 4%. Overall, the observed risk of technique failure at 24 months differed by 20%, simply by applying different approaches to the same data set.The approach to reporting technique failure has an important impact on the observed results. We present a robust and transparent methodology to track technique failure over time and to compare performance between programs.