Abstract: Objectives Follow-up by telephone is a supplementary method for home peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients to communicate with medical staffs. It is very important for PD doctors and nurses to get the message from patients about their conditions and then to guide the patients how to adjust their diet, medication, processing method and therapeutic schedule. We investigated the telephone record from PD patients to analyze the information and frequency of consultation by telephone in order to provide the evidences for individualized training and retraining. Methods We searched for the follow-up record by telephone from all PD patients treated at the PD center of Peking University People's Hospital from Oct. 1st, 2010 to Sept. 30th, 2012. Their demographic data were collected, and the characteristics, content and frequency of the telephone calls from the PD patients were analyzed. Chi-square test was used to compare the frequencies of telephone call from the PD patients with different characteristics. Results ①In the period of two years, there were totally 3,936 telephone calls, of which 1,983 calls (50.4%) asked for consultation. These calls were from 194 patients, accounting for 91.9% of the treated PD patients. ② The main item for consultation was PD-related dietary, followed by cardiovascular symptoms and related subjects, and volume overload. ③ Further stratified analyses were carried out based on primary disease, season, age, and telephone call frequency. Patients with diabetic nephropathy called more frequent than those with other primary diseases. Volume overload was the common topic in winter, and infection related complications were more frequent in summer than in other seasons. Most calls were from the patients of 61～80 years old. The call frequency was higher in patients of >80 years old than in those of 61～80 years old. Conclusions primary disease, season and age affected the frequency and topic of telephone calls. Education and retraining should be emphasized in specific seasons such as winter and summer, especially to diabetic nephropathy patients, elderly patients.

Key words: Peritoneal dialysis, Telephone consultation, Retraining