Effect of the Arteriovenous Access for Hemodialysis on Subendocardial Viability Ratio, Pulse Pressure and Hospitalizations

Background: In some patients the potential benefits of the arteriovenous (AV) access over catheter for hemodialysis seem to be outweighed by global cardiovascular status deterioration.

Methods: We prospectively evaluated 44 pre-dialysis chronic kidney disease patients submitted to vascular access creation during a follow-up of 25 ± 9 months. We performed pulse wave analysis and biochemical assessment before and 2 months after AV access construction, and we registered premature vascular access thrombosis, and all-cause and cardiovascular hospitalizations throughout follow-up.

Results: We found a statistically significant decrease in the subendocardial viability ratio (SEVR) and pulse pressure (PP) parameters after AV access creation while brain natriuretic peptide significantly increased. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis identified SEVR ≤113 % evaluated 2 months after vascular access construction as the best cutoff value for predicting all-cause and cardiovascular hospitalizations. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that a SEVR ≤113 % was associated with all-cause (p = 0.010) and cardiovascular (p = 0.029) hospitalizations; Cox regression analysis verified a 4.9-fold higher risk of all-cause hospitalization in patients with SEVR ≤113 % (p = 0.005).

Conclusion: To our best knowledge, this report indicates, for the first time, that despite the decrease in PP parameters, the creation of a vascular access for hemodialysis was also associated with a reduction of SEVR which predicted a worse clinical outcome. We argue that the decrease of pulse pressure after arteriovenous construction may reflect a new hemodynamic set-point after vascular access creation and may not indicate a protective cardiovascular effect.