Can Symptom monitoring With Feedback to clinicians improve the lives of people on dialysis? (SWIFT) - Pilot study of acceptability and feasibility

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Treatment of end-stage kidney disease for more than 2 million people worldwide, including 13,000 Australians on dialysis is extremely costly ($1.1billion per year) yet results in poor survival (45% at 5-years), lower than all cancers combined. Health-related quality of life for people managed on haemodialysis is low, around 60% of full health. Both women and men on haemodialysis frequently experience symptoms of severe or overwhelming pain, fatigue, nausea, cramping, itching, trouble sleeping and depression which contributes to a poor quality of life. The problem is standard dialysis care does not focus on patient-centered outcomes like health-related quality of life or symptoms; instead the focus is on the management of biomarkers (e.g. urea, potassium, phosphate). This has resulted in missed opportunities to intervene and improve symptom management and overall quality of life. New data from other areas suggest symptom monitoring may not only improve quality of life, but also improve overall survival. The Symptom monitoring WIth Feedback Trial (SWIFT) is a novel Australia & New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Association (ANZDATA) registry-based cluster randomised trial to improve the lives of people on kidney dialysis. We will test the hypothesis that: symptom monitoring using the IPOS-Renal with feedback to clinicians, improves health-related quality of life (measured by the EQ-5D-5L) and cause specific mortality among participants receiving haemodialysis. The SWIFT pilot study will assess the feasibility of electronic capture of patient reported outcomes using tablet computers, and feeding back this information to clinicians, for discussion in clinical consultations.