Half a century after the first dialysis procedure was conducted in Taiwan an international symposium was held yesterday to mark the event.
The symposium included a discussion of chronic kidney disease and use of dialysis globally and in Taiwan, which has the highest prevalence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) anywhere in the world.
Dialysis was first conducted in Taiwan in 1963 at National Taiwan University Hospital.
From a global perspective, “the number of deaths attributable to chronic diseases in general is on the rise,” said Philip Kam-Tao Li, head of nephrology at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong.
Despite recent flu scares, global mortality from communicable diseases is forecast to decrease, while deaths from chronic diseases are expected to increase, Li said.
While diabetes is projected to be the seventh leading cause of death by 2030 — down from fourth in 2002 — the two leading causes of death, ischaemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease (stroke), which ranked first and second respectively in 2002, also frequently afflict patients with diabetes, Li said.
Diabetes can cause various long-term complications, the most common of which is chronic kidney disease.
Chronic kidney disease can eventually lead to ESRD, or kidney failure, that requires patients to undergo dialysis treatment if a kidney transplant is not available.
According to last year’s US Renal Data System Annual Data Report, Taiwan had the highest incidence of ESRD, at 2,584 per million people in 2010, Li said.
According to data collected since 2007, the cost of dialysis procedures accounted for 6.2 percent of the nation’s total healthcare expenditures, while the dialysis prevalence rate was about 0.22 percent, Li said.
As such, healthcare spending on dialysis treatment was 28 times the national average for other treatments.
Statistics made public last week by the Bureau of National Health Insurance indicates that the demand for dialysis treatment continued to rise last year.
Currently, 71,468 patients — or 0.3 percent of the population — are undergoing dialysis treatment, while the cost to the National Health Insurance system is NT$44.329 billion (US$1.48 billion), approximately 7.85 percent of total healthcare costs, the statistics showed.
However, the high number of patients successfully treated for ESRD is testimony to “the improvement in the quality of dialysis care in Taiwan,” National Taiwan University Hospital superintendent Chen Ming-fong (陳明豐) said.
An aging population, a decrease in the mortality rates of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases and an increase in survival rates of patients requiring dialysis are all contributing factors to the high costs, Chen said.
Wang Jung-der (王榮德), chair professor of public health at National Cheng Kung University, said dialysis treatment has been shown to extend the life expectancy of ESRD patients by 10 years, or, 6.5 quality-adjusted life years
However, prevention and control of chronic kidney disease is the fundamental solution, Wang said.
“The early referral of chronic kidney disease patients to nephrologists is strongly advised,” Wang added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater