Stiffness parameter β as a predictor of the 4-year all-cause mortality of chronic hemodialysis patients

There is a lack of information on stiffness parameter beta, an index of arterial stiffness, in hemodialysis (HD) patients. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether stiffness parameter beta is predictive of the long-term mortality of chronic HD patients. We measured biochemical parameters and the stiffness parameter beta of 80 patients on maintenance HD therapy and followed their course for 4 years, and we enrolled 70 of these 80 patients in the study. We divided the 70 patients into tertiles according to their stiffness parameter beta values, and conducted multivariate analyses to examine the impact of the tertiles on 4-year mortality. Older age and the presence of diabetes mellitus were found to be independently associated with higher stiffness parameter beta values. Fifteen patients (21.4 %) died and 16 (22.9 %) experienced a new cardiovascular event during the follow-up period. The results of a Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed a significantly higher risk of all-cause mortality in the HD patients with highest stiffness parameter beta values (p = 0.0106). According to the ROC curve, the cut-off level that yielded maximal sensitivity and specificity for predicting all-cause mortality was 10.1, and the sensitivity and specificity using the cut-off value were 69.2 and 70.2 %, respectively. The results of this study suggest that stiffness parameter beta is a predictor of all-cause mortality in chronic HD patients.