Objective To determine the effect of self-care ability and family assistant ability on survival rate of peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. Methods One hunrdred and fifty-five PD patients were involved in this study. These patients were followed-up during the whole PD period. Either they exit or died, their survival time were recorded. The patients' self-care ability and their family assistant ability were evaluated during the study. Result The patients' self-care ability had a significant influence on their survival (P<0.01), the patients with full self-care ability and partly self-care ability had higher survival than them who had no self-care ability. But the family assistant ability had no effect on survival (P>0.05). Conclusion The patients' self-care ability was related to the clinical outcome in PD patients. The improvement of self-care ability may be powerful to the amelioration of their prognosis.