Attitude of physicians toward the management of bone diseases in hemodialysis patients : a questionair based survey

Abstract EN

This study is aimed at evaluating the attitude of physicians in dialysis centers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) towards the management of bone disease.

We sent a questionnaire to 168 physicians who jointly cared for 7214 chronic hemodialysis (HD) patients.

A total of 134 physicians (79.8 %) answered the questionnaire from 134 dialysis centers (91.7 %) that cumulatively catered to 7030 dialysis patients (97.6 %).

Of them, 71 (53.4 %) had a protocol for management of bone disease at their centers, while 87 (67.4 %) believed that the current results of management of bone disease were satisfactory.

About 84.2 % and 82.7 % of the physicians checked serum calcium and phosphorus levels respectively monthly, while only 24.6 % would check parathormone (PTH) once every three months ; 32.8 % did not have this latter test available in their centers.

Bone x-rays of the hands and clavicles were being performed once every year by 47.4 %, while 38.4 % would perform the x-rays as indicated by the clinical status.

Therapy would be aimed to achieve mid-normal calcium and phosphorus levels by 64.9 % and 56.8 % of the respondents respectively, while only 29.3 % would try to achieve three times the normal level of the PTH.

Only 43.3 % of the respondents believed that sevelamer would be a safer phosphate binder than calcium or metal based one.

Almost all the respondents used vitamin D, mostly by daily oral administration.

Fifty-nine respondents (44.4 %) believed that sevelamer plus vitamin D was better to control PTH than calcium-based phosphate binder plus vitamin D, while 51 (38.3 %) had no idea about this issue.

There were 57 respondents (42.5 %) who believed that high intake of calcium would increase the risk of vascular and metastatic calcifications without hypercalcemia, while 43 (32.1 %) had no idea.

There were a significantly lower percentage of MOH centers having a protocol for management of bone disease in the dialysis patients.

Also, there was a higher percentage of non-availability of PTH assay, lower tendency of the physicians to target low normal level of phosphorus and higher percentage to target normal levels of PTH in MOH centers.

In addition, MOH physicians had significantly lesser tendency to consider sevelamer the best phosphate binder for the dialysis patients.

Our study suggests that the current practices concerning the management of bone disease in dialysis centers in the KSA require refinement and a protocol to guide the management is required.