Sato H, et al. - This study entails the assessment of serum calcium (Ca)-magnesium (Mg) ratio as a predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in incident dialysis patients. Findings demonstrated a significant association of a high Ca-Mg ratio with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality and, its superior accuracy over serum Mg in the study populace.

Methods

• This study included a total of 378 consecutive patients with end-stage renal disease who started dialysis between January 2009 and December 2015 at the Japanese Red Cross Ishinomaki Hospital.
• Using electronic medical records, researchers gathered data of patients' demographic characteristics and comorbidities.
• They used Cox proportional hazard model to retrospectively assess the association of the serum Ca-Mg ratio with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.
• In addition, they determined the value that predicted cardiovascular death using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.

Results

• Researchers analyzed a total of 253 patients with serum Mg and Ca data.
• Data reported that the 3-year survival rate of this group was 0.70 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.55-0.80), and the hazard ratio for the risk of death was 3.94 (95% CI 1.37-11.31).
• In addition, findings revealed that the 3-year cardiovascular mortality rate was 0.12 (95% CI 0.05-0.23), which was significantly higher than that of the other groups.
• It was also noted that the ROC curve of cardiovascular mortality with the Ca-Mg ratio was greater than that of Mg (area under the curve 0.75 vs. 0.69, p=0.037).