E Lars Penne , 1 , Peter J Blankestijn 1 , Michiel L Bots 2 , Marinus A van den Dorpel 3 , Muriel P Grooteman 4 , Menso J Nubé 4 , 5 , Ingeborg van der Tweel 6 , Piet M ter Wee 4 , the CONTRAST study group
20 May 2005
Current Controlled Trials in Cardiovascular Medicine
End stage renal disease, hemodialysis, hemodiafiltration, convective transport, middle molecules, mortality, cardiovascular disease, outcome
The high incidence of cardiovascular disease in patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) is related to the accumulation of uremic toxins in the middle and large-middle molecular weight range. As online hemodiafiltration (HDF) removes these molecules more effectively than standard hemodialysis (HD), it has been suggested that online HDF improves survival and cardiovascular outcome. Thus far, no conclusive data of HDF on target organ damage and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality are available. Therefore, the CONvective TRAnsport STudy (CONTRAST) has been initiated.
CONTRAST is a Dutch multi-center randomised controlled trial. In this trial, approximately 800 chronic hemodialysis patients will be randomised between online HDF and low-flux HD, and followed for three years. The primary endpoint is all cause mortality. The main secondary outcome variables are fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.