Abstract:

Objective To investigate the value of abdominal aortic calcification (AAC) for evaluating the prognosis of patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (MHD). Methods 164 patients were enrolled and their AAC was evaluated with abdominal lateral plain radiography. Patients were assigned to the AAC group and the non-AAC group according to whether AAC was presented and were followed up for a period of (54.51±13.80) months. Results Of 164 patients undergoing MHD, 113 (68.90%) developed AAC. Of 32 patients died (19.51%) during follow up period, 22 (13.41%) died from cardiovascular disease (CVD). Kaplan-Meier analyses showed that the all-cause mortality and the CVD mortality were significantly higher in the AAC group than in the non-AAC group (24.8% vs 7.8%, P=0.013; 18.6% vs 2.0%, P=0.004). Multivariate Cox proportional hazards analyses indicated that AAC, age, and albumin were independent risk factors for the all-cause mortality, while AAC and age were independent risk factors for the CVD mortality. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves suggested that AAC had a higher value for predicting the all-cause mortality and the CVD mortality with areas under curves (AUC) of 0.719 (95%CI 0.617-0.821，P=0.000) and 0.743 (95%CI 0.640-0.847，P=0.000), respectively. Conclusion The incidence of AAC is higher in patients undergoing MHD. The all-cause mortality and the CVD mortality are significantly higher in patients with AAC than in patients without AAC. AAC has a favorable value for evaluating the prognosis of patients undergoing MHD.

Key words: hemodialysis, abdominal aortic calcification, prognosis, cardiovascular disease