Assessment of Arteriovenous Graft Survival and Effective Factors in Hemodialysis Patients in Iran

Patients under hemodialysis owe their life to chronic and acute dialysis. An acute dialysis can be done with
embedding catheter in a central vein, but in chronic hemodialysis, fistula or arteriovenous graft (AVG) is needed. There are
some agents involved with efficacy and complications of graft such as age, peripheral vascular disease, and the onset and
length of dialysis. The purpose of this study was to determine the survival rate of AVG and its numerous complications to
avoid complications with early detection.
Materials and Methods: In this study, 299 patients from September 2012 to September 2015 under AVG embedded in the
operating room in Imam Khomeini Hospital were studied. The duration of the follow-up was 1 year at least for each patient,
and the duration of the study was 36 months. To describe the qualitative and quantitative variables, frequency distribution,
mean, and standard deviation were reported. Cox regression was used to investigate the relationship between variables and
survival time.
Results: The study is conducted with 299 patients under hemodialysis with AVG from September 2012 to September 2014.
The mean age was 62.87 ± 13. A total of 127 patients were male and 172 female. The most frequent of AVG was done in
left brachial-axillary 226 cases (75.6%). The results of 1 year survival time were 43.5%. In our study, the effect of age,
number of previous catheterization, diabetes, and glomerulonephritis on survival rate was significant.
Conclusion: Some conditions can be helpful to reduce the complications of graft and increase the survival rate such as
training of staff, training of patients about the regular visit after AVG embedding, the use of new graft with less arterial
diameter, early treatment of complications of AVG, and technical principles of vascular anastomosis