The COVID-19 pandemic is making it extremely hard for patients who suffer from kidney failure to receive their weekly dialysis treatments. Nephrologists across the United States - including Northwestern Medicine's Dr. Susan Quaggin - are calling for states to prioritize these patients to get the COVID vaccine, as well as the staff working in dialysis centers who provide this life-saving therapy.
"Our patients are unique because they have to travel - often on some form of public transportation - to get dialysis three times per week in order to live," said Quaggin, director of the Feinberg Cardiovascular and Renal Research Institute at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and president of the American Society of Nephrology. "People on dialysis have limited ability to physically distance, heightened vulnerability to infection and poor outcomes if they are infected."
Patients with kidney failure who receive dialysis have proven to be one of the most vulnerable groups of Medicare patients for hospitalization and mortality to COVID-19. In people receiving dialysis, mortality was 37% higher during April 2020 as compared to April of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
This increased mortality is attributed to documented SARS-CoV-2 infections, undocumented viral infections and decreased access to necessary non-dialysis-related medical care, Quaggin said.
