Cardiovascular Risk Factors in End-Stage Renal Disease Patients: The Impact of Conventional Dialysis versus Online-Hemodiafiltration

Abstract

End-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients present high incidence of cardiovascular (CV) events, which are the most common causes of death in these patients. The occurrence of CV events appears as a consequence of the high prevalence of traditional and non-traditional CV risk factors. Online-hemodiafiltration (OL-HDF) was introduced as a better alternative to conventional dialysis, as it was proposed to be more biocompat-ible, to increase dialysis efficacy, to reduce the inflammatory response to treatment and to improve patient's quality of life, contributing to reduce CV and all-cause mortality risk in ESRD. However, data in literature, comparing the effect of OL-HDF with conventional dialysis for clinical CV outcome and all-cause mortality, yielded controversy about those benefits of OL-HFD over standard hemodialysis. A review of the traditional CV risk factors (e.g., arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, obesity , smoking and advanced age), non-traditional risk factors (e.g., anemia, oxidative stress, hyperphosphatemia, endothelial dysfunction, left ventricular hypertrophy, insulin resistance, high levels of lipoprotein(a) and inflammation) and potential renocardio-vascular biomarkers, in the setting of ESRD, is presented. The impact of conventional hemodialysis and OL-HDF on CV risk factors and on the outcome of ESRD patients is also addressed.