CALIFORNIA CITY, Calif. — About 750,000 patients need dialysis treatments every year in the United States. The CDC found adults getting this treatment are 100x more likely to develop a staph infection.
When the kidneys shut down, dialysis can take over their essential work. Using needles or catheters, it filters toxins from the blood, which is where the opportunity for infection happens.
The findings show Black and Hispanic patients are at the highest risk for infection. One in three dialysis patients are Black and one in five are Hispanic.
"Hispanic patients on dialysis actually had a 40% higher risk of staph blood treatment infections as compared to white patients. It seems like some of those differences may actually be socioeconomic differences. So, where you're living at home, how your access to care is, whether or not you have access to other sorts of things like good nutrition, regular hygiene, all of that stuff can affect our risk for infection. So, I think if you're somebody on dialysis, you have to be really careful about these types of infections because these complications of dialysis are what lead to somebody's demise, lead to them ending up In the hospital," said ABC10 Health Expert Dr. Payal Kohli.
Kohli says treatment centers are taking the steps to reduce infection, including finding new ways to access the bloodstream and emphasizing good hygiene at facilities. Kohli says dialysis patients should talk to their doctor about how to recognize infection early and minimize risk.
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