Outcomes among Patients with End-Stage Kidney Disease and Chronic Limb-Threatening Ischemia: A Population-based Cohort Study.

Objective: To understand mortality and secondary outcomes in patients with both end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) and chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) after no procedural treatment, primary amputation, endovascular treatment, and open surgery.

Summary background data: ESKD and CLTI commonly cooccur and limited prior work has demonstrated poor outcomes including one-year survival despite treatment.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective national cohort study of United States Renal Data System data from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2019 to determine mortality, major postoperative complications, and other outcomes. We performed an exploratory analysis comparing two-year survival by treatment using propensity matching.

Results: Of 1,876,652 records with a CLTI diagnosis, we identified 3,908 patients with ESKD and an incident CLTI diagnosis. Mean age at CLTI diagnosis was 65.7 years and 2,405 (61.5%) were male. 2,696 (69.0%) had no procedural treatment, 609 (15.6%) had major limb amputation, 439 (11.2%) had endovascular treatment, and 164 (4.2%) had open surgery. There was 44.9% mortality at one year, along with 41.8% major postoperative complications and 52.6% readmissions at 90 days. Comparing two-year survival, we found no differences between the amputation and endovascular cohorts (P=0.08) and between endovascular and open (P=.06). There was superior two-year survival in the open surgery cohort compared to the amputation cohort (P=0.002).

Conclusions: Patients living with both ESKD and CLTI experience poor outcomes irrespective of treatment. Exploratory analyses demonstrated that two-year survival among the three principal procedural treatments was similar except for superior survival among patients undergoing open therapy compared to primary amputation.