The long-term outcomes of tunneled peritoneal dialysis catheters (Tenckhoff catheters) inserted under imaging-guidance in the angiography suite

Peritoneal dialysis is an established form of renal replacement therapy
for those with end stage renal failure in Australia, allowing patients to
remain out of hospital during their treatment.
There are a number of different ways to insert a peritoneal dialysis
catheter (Tenckhoff catheter). These include laparoscopic,
peritoneoscopic, and percutaneous.
Many centres perform laparoscopic placement as there are a large
number of available surgeons to perform this and there are established
favourable long term outcomes. However, these procedures require
longer hospital admission, have a longer recover time, and patients are
often placed on a general surgical waitlist which can delay time to
insertion.
At the Alfred, the majority of catheters are placed via the percutaneous
method using the Seldinger technique and a combination of ultrasound
and fluoroscopic guidance. This has been shown to be safe in a previous
study at the Alfred, cost effective, and leads to reduced waiting
times for insertion.
Our previous study showed that the short terms outcomes of this
service were in keeping with that of established literature however to
date there is a relative paucity of literature assessing the mid- and longterm outcomes of this approach as compared with laparoscopic
approaches.
We hypothesise that our longer-term outcomes of this known costeffective procedure will be non-inferior to the results of other methods of
Tenckhoff catheter insertion such as laparoscopic approaches.