It is normal human nature to raise the question, “Now that I am on dialysis, how does this alter my lifespan?” For me at 84, I have three choices: Dialysis, Heart Transplant, or death. That simple. I chose not to pursue a transplant for one main reason – at my age younger people have much more to gain and potentially give back to society than I have so I defer to them. While I have ruled out a transplant, that does not mean I still can’t give a little back to society, this blog being an example. So it boiled down to Dialysis for me.
But this still begs the question, how has and is dialysis impacting my lifespan, or how much longer statically I will live. In 2018, adjusted mortality was more than twice as high among Medicare beneficiaries ages 66 years or older with CKD (96.0 per 1,000) compared with those without CKD (41.0 per 1,000). According to data from the U.S. Renal Data System, the chart below follows:
- 70- to 74-year-olds on dialysis live 3.6 years on average, compared with 12.2 years for their healthy peers;
- 75- to 79-year-olds on dialysis live 3.1 years on average, compared to 9.2 years;
- 80- to 85-year-olds on dialysis live 2.5 years on average, compared to 6.7 years; and
- Patients on dialysis ages 85 and up live two years on average, compared to 3.5 years for their healthy peers.
A check on the above is provided by the SSA with a web site in which sex and date of birth are entered to ascertain how numbered your days are. Mine is shown below from their site:
In researching background for this blog, I discovered that there is no simple answer to the question of how dialysis impacts life span. There are so many what is called in statistics “intervening variables” as to defy meaningful computation. A few of these variables are sex, confounding health conditions (approaching unique for each individual), ethnicity, race, age, age upon onset of dialysis, mental approach to dialysis, etc.
However, I did discover research from a group in Canada shown below that provides some interesting data. I fall in the last row of the bottom chart. Obviously being a diabetic AND on Dialysis loaded heavily in their predictive modeling. The last bottom row suggests I have a 4.1% chance of living 10 years after starting dialysis. I’ll take the odds.
Bottom line: All of us have a need to be exceptional, don’t we?
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