Framingham Risk Score and clinical outcomes of forearm autologous arteriovenous fistulas in end-stage renal disease patients: a retrospective cohort study.

Abstract Background The failure of autologous arteriovenous fistulas (AVF) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) share several common risk factors. The Framingham risk score (FRS) can predict the occurrence of CVD. Accordingly, we conducted a retrospective cohort study to evaluate if the FRS can predict the AVF failure in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. Methods In this study, 188 ESRD patients (with the mean age 57.2 ± 13.8 years, 64.9% of them were males) were enrolled with a median follow-up time of 41 months. AVF failure was defined as the presence of stenosis or thrombosis, and loss of the ability to receive prescribed hemodialysis. Primary patency of AVFs, and the association between FRS and AVF failure or death were analyzed by the Kaplan-Meier method or Cox proportional hazards model, accordingly. Results The primary patency of AVFs was 84.6%, 79.3%, 76.6%, 76.1% and 76.1% at 12, 24, 36, 48 and 60 months, respectively. However, there was no significant difference of the primary patencies among the 1st Quartile, 2nd Quartile, 3rd Quartile and 4th Quartile of FRS (log-rank test, p =0.15). Moreover, FRS was not associated with all-cause or CVD mortality after adjusting for other confounders in the Cox proportional hazards models. Conclusions This study did not find FRS associated with AVF failure or mortality among ESRD patients.