Background: Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is the most frequent hereditary cause of chronic kidney disease. Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is often avoided for patients with PKD because of the suspected risk of mechanical and infectious complications. Only a few studies have analyzed the outcome of PKD patients on PD with sometimes conflicting results. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to investigate outcomes of patients with PKD treated by PD.
Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed examining all studies which included "Polycystic kidney disease" and "Peritoneal dialysis" in their titles, excluding commentaries, letters to the authors and abstracts. PubMed, Embase, Google scholar and Scopus were searched to December 31st 2017. The primary outcome was overall patient survival. Additional outcomes were PD technique survival, incidence of peritonitis and incidence of abdominal wall hernia.
Results: 9 studies published between 1998 and 2016 were included for analysis with a total of 7,197 patients including 882 PKD patients. Overall survival of PKD patients was found to be better compared to non-PKD patients (HR = 0.70 [95% CI, 0.54-0.92]). There were no statistical differences between PKD and non-PKD patients in terms of peritonitis (OR = 0.86 [95% CI, 0.66-1.12]) and technical survival (HR = 0.98 [95% CI, 0.83-1.16]). There was an increased risk of hernia in PKD patients (OR = 2.28 [95% CI, 1.26-4.12]).
Conclusions: PKD is associated with a better global survival, an increased risk of abdominal hernia, but no differences in peritonitis rate or technical survival were found. PD is a safe dialysis modality for PKD patients. Properly designed controlled studies are needed to determine whether all PKD patients are eligible for PD or whether some specific criteria should be determined.