Aims: To describe the demographics of the paediatric renal replacement therapy (RRT) population under the age of 18 years in the UK and to analyse changes in demography over time.
Methods: Data were collected electronically from all 13 paediatric renal centres within the UK. A series of cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were performed to describe the demographics of paediatric RRT patients.
Results: A total of 891 children and young people under 18 with established renal failure (ERF) were receiving treatment at paediatric nephrology centres in 2013. At the census date, 80.2% had a functioning transplant, 11.7%were receiving haemodialysis (HD) and 8.1% were receiving peritoneal dialysis (PD). In patients aged ,16 years the prevalence of ERF was 58.2 per million age related population(pmarp) and the incidence 9.3 pmarp. A third of the prevalent patients had one or more reported comorbidities.At transfer to adult services, 85.2% of patients had a functioning renal transplant. Pre-emptive transplantation was seen to occur in a third of children starting RRT under16 years, with lower rates seen in girls and ethnic minorities.Living donation as starting modality has continued to improve with an increase from 8.8% in 1999–2003 to 18.4% in 2009–2013. Survival in childhood amongst children starting RRT was the lowest in those aged less than two years.
Conclusions: We report continued improvement in data quality and electronic submission of data returns. The data provided in this report show relatively stable trends of incidence and prevalence in children with established renal failure.