Rehabilitation in the Renal Population: Barriers to Access

SummaryAdministrative data suggest familiar socioeconomic, race, sex, and age disparities in renal patients' receipt of services such as cardiac rehabilitation. Dialysis facility characteristics and disparities in access to transplantation, home-based dialysis, and more frequent dialysis also may influence patients' access to rehabilitation opportunities. Tested models exist for interdisciplinary inpatient rehabilitation, exercise/physical conditioning programs, and psychosocial interventions, and several of these programs consider the special needs of particular age groups. Recognition of the importance of physical activity/exercise and depressed mood as predictors of patient outcomes, and research addressing the concept of frailty, effectively may increase the salience of rehabilitation objectives throughout the renal community.