Correlates and variance decomposition analysis of heparin dosing for maintenance hemodialysis in older US patients.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Heparin is commonly used to anticoagulate the hemodialysis (HD) circuit. Despite the bleeding risk, no American standards exist for its administration. We identified correlates and quantified sources of variance in heparin dosing for HD.

Methods

We performed a cross-sectional study of patients aged 67 years or older who underwent HD with heparin on one of two randomly chosen days in 2008 at a national chain of dialysis facilities. Using a mixed effects model with random intercept for facility and fixed patient and facility characteristics, we examined heparin dosing at patient and facility levels.

Results

The median heparin dose among the 17 722 patients treated in 1366 facilities was 4000 (25th-75th percentile: 2625-6000) units. In multivariable-adjusted anal

SUBMITTER: Shen JI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4022350 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature