UK Renal Registry 16th Annual Report: Appendix E Methodology for Estimating Catchment Populations of Renal Centres in England and Wales for Dialysis Patients

Providing accurate centre-level incidence and prevalence rates for patients receiving renal replacement therapy (RRT) in the UK was limited until the 13th Annual Report by the difficulty in estimating the catchment population from which the RRT population was derived. One reason for this was that the geographical boundaries separating renal centres are relatively arbitrary and dependent upon a number of factors including referral practice, patient choice and patient movement. Previously, incidence and prevalence rates had been calculated at Local Authority/Primary Care Trust/Health Board level for which denominator data were available, but not at renal centre level. UK Renal Registry (UKRR) Annual Reports prior to the 13th suggested an estimate of the size of the catchment populations. These were extrapolated figures originally derived from data in the 1992 National Renal Survey undertaken by Paul Roderick. The purpose of this document is to present an estimate of the dialysis catchment population for all renal centres in England and Wales. The document also contains a methodological description and discussion of the limitations of these estimates. The previous three UKRR Annual Reports contained estimates for English renal centres using the same methodology as outlined here but using 2001 Census data and 2007 prevalent dialysis patients and has been explained in detail elsewhere [1]. The methodology has now been repeated using data from the 2011 Census in order to obtain more up to date estimates and also to include renal centres in Wales. Methods