James Richards, Mohammed Hossain, Dominic Summers, Matthew Slater, Matthew Bartlett, Vasilis Kosmoliaptsis, Edward Cf Wilson, Regin Lagaac, Anna Sidders, Claire Foley, Emma Laing, Valerie Hopkins, Chloe Fitzpatrick-Creamer, Cara Hudson, Helen Thomas, Sam Turner, Andrew Tambyraja, Subash Somalanka, James Hunter, Sam Dutta, Sarah Lawman, Tracey Salter, Mohammed Aslam, Atul Bagul, Rajesh Sivaprakasam, George Smith, Zia Moinuddin, Simon Knight, Paul Gibbs, Reza Motallebzadeh, Nicholas Barnett, Gavin Pettigrew
INTRODUCTION: Arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs) are considered the best and safest modality for providing haemodialysis in patients with end-stage renal disease. Only 20% of UK centres achieve the recommended 80% target for achieving dialysis of the prevalent dialysis population via permanent access (as opposed to a central venous catheter). This is partly due to the relatively poor maturation rate of newly created fistulas, with as many as 50% of fistulas failing to mature.The Surveillance Of arterioveNous fistulAe using ultRasound study will examine whether a protocolised programme of Doppler ultrasound (US) surveillance can identify, early after creation, potentially correctable problems in those AVFs that subsequently fail to mature...
July 23, 2019: BMJ Open