An Exploration of People's Perceptions of Undergoing Treatment for Advanced Chronic Kidney Disease: a Comparison Between Different Treatment Modalities

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects over 4% of the UK population, with approximately 118 per million population commencing treatment for end-stage kidney disease each year (UK renal registry, 2017). As enal function deteriorates, these individuals become progressively symptomatic and require renal replacement therapy (RRT). CKD is split into five stages, classified by their glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), with stages G4 and G5 representing advanced disease preceding end-stage renal failure (Levey et al., 2005).

Along with diminished physical ability, cognitive function and quality of life (QoL) have also been shown to deteriorate within this population (Abdel-Kader, Unruh, & Weisbord, 2009).

Previous findings have shown that individuals with renal disease, particularly advanced CKD/ESRD have a reduced QoL and substantial symptom burden, defined as a loss of functional abilities along with psychological suffering affected by the impact of their symptoms (Gill, Chakraborty, & Selby, 2012). Of note, this seems to become particularly notable at the initiation of RRT (Pagels, Söderkvist, Medin, Hylander, & Heiwe, 2012). This supports previous findings by Davison & Jhangri (2010) and findings by Lowney et al (2015) who found that individuals undergoing in-centre haemodialysis (HD) had a substantial symptom burden which was associated with a reduced health-related QoL. This is significant because in-centre HD (ICHD) is currently the most common form of RRT globally.

To date, no research has qualitatively examined the burden of other forms of RRT, such as home haemodialysis (HHD), which is typically undertaken at home more frequently and for shorter durations than ICHD; and peritoneal dialysis (PD), where the peritoneum is used as a membrane through which excess fluid and toxins are removed from the body. A recent investigation by Jones and colleagues (2018) explored the perceptions of UK-based individuals undergoing ICHD within the National Health Service (NHS). Interestingly, several common themes were identified; including fluctuations in their QoL and well-being over the course of their HD therapy and restrictions in their social lives, due to HD scheduling and the heavy emotional impact on themselves and others. These were shown to often be overlooked in the literature, however, these factors have the potential to negatively impact an individual's QoL and sense of self, defined as one's sense of purpose in life. Importantly, higher rates of depression and anxiety have also been reported in individuals with CKD (Chen et al., 2010; Semaan, Noureddine, & Farhood, 2018). For example, Barros et al. (2016) found that greater than 30% of individuals had depressive symptoms and reduced QoL. Furthermore, those found with depressive symptoms tended to have a lower survival rate at the 2-year evaluation period. It has been postulated that this increased prevalence in depressive symptoms could be due to some significant psychosocial implications of CKD such as, reductions in employment, social and personal time and interpersonal relationships (Finnegan-John & Thomas, 2013), supported by a recent (currently unpublished) investigation conducted by the research team for this study at the Wessex Kidney Centre (WKC). During this study, it became clear through informal discussions with people with ESRD and the treatment of this impacts their lives greatly and that qualitative markers of QoL had the potential to be very insightful into the impact of ESRD. Given the above, this study aims to investigate the QoL of adults at the advanced stages of CKD (CKD stage G4 and G5) and those on all modalities of RRT (ICHD, HHD, PD, and transplantation).