Strategies to improve dietary, fluid, dialysis or medication adherence in patients with end stage kidney disease on dialysis: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized intervention trials

BACKGROUND: In patients with end stage kidney disease (ESKD) on dialysis, treatment non-adherence is common and results in poor health outcomes. However, the clinical benefits of interventions to improve adherence in dialysis patients are difficult to evaluate since trialled interventions and reported outcomes are highly diverse/ heterogeneous. This review summarizes existing literature on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating adherence interventions in ESKD patients focusing on the intervention category, outcome efficacy and persistence of benefit beyond the intervention. METHODS: We performed electronic database searches in Medline, Embase & Cochrane CENTRAL upto 1(st) July 2018 for RCTs evaluating interventions to improve diet, fluid, medication or dialysis adherence in ESKD patients. Study characteristics including category of interventions, outcomes, efficacy and follow-up were assessed. Meta-analysis was used to compute pooled estimates of the effects on the commonest reported outcome measures. RESULTS: From 1311 citations, we included 36 RCTs (13 cluster-randomized trials), recruiting a total of 3510 dialysis patients (mean age 55.1 ± 5.8 years, males 58.1%). Overall risk of bias was ‘high’ for 24 and of ‘some concern’ for 12 studies. Most interventions (33 trials, 92%) addressed patient related factors, and included educational/cognitive (N = 11), behavioural / counselling (N = 4), psychological/affective (N = 4) interventions or a combination (N = 14) of the above. A majority of (28/36) RCTs showed improvement in some reported outcomes. Surrogate measures like changes in phosphate (N = 19) and inter-dialytic weight gain (N = 15) were the most common reported outcomes and both showed significant improvement in the meta-analysis. Sixteen trials reported follow-up (1–12 months) beyond intervention and the benefits waned or were absent in nine trials within 12 months post-intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions to improve treatment adherence result in modest short-term benefits in surrogate outcome measures in dialysis patients, but significant improvements in trial design and outcome reporting are warranted to identify strategies that would achieve meaningful and sustainable clinical benefits. LIMITATIONS: Poor methodological quality of trials. Frequent use of surrogate outcomes measures. Low certainly of evidence.