Background and objectives Elderly patients require tunneled central vein dialysis catheters more often than younger patients. Little is known about the risk of catheter-related bloodstream infection in this population. Results In total, 374 nonelderly and 90 elderly patients with mean (SD) ages of 54.8 (12.3) and 81.3 (4.9) years and dialysis vintages of 1.8 (3.3) and 1.5 (2.9) years (P=0.47), respectively, were identified. Mean at-risk catheter-days were 272 (243) in nonelderly and 318 (240) in elderly patients. Between age groups, there were no significant differences in initial catheter site, type of catheter lock solution, or microbiology results. A total of 208 catheterrelated bloodstream infection events occurred (190 events in nonelderly and 18 events in elderly patients), with a catheter-related bloodstream infection incidence per 1000 catheter-days of 1.97 (4.6) in nonelderly and 0.55 (1.6) in elderly patients (P,0.001). Relative to nonelderly patients, the hazard ratio for catheter-related bloodstream infection in the elderly was 0.33 (95% confidence interval, 0.20 to 0.55; P,0.001) after multivariate analysis.Conclusion Elderly patients on hemodialysis using tunneled central vein dialysis catheters are at lower risk of catheter-related bloodstream infection than their younger counterparts. For some elderly patients, tunneled central vein dialysis catheters may represent a suitable dialysis access option in the setting of nonmaturing arteriovenous fistulae or poorly functioning synthetic grafts.

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Pruritus is a common problem following a kidney transplant and is usually attributable to new medications related to transplantation. We present an unusual case of pruritus that began several months after kidney transplantation. After changing several immunosuppressive medications, numerous clinical visits and consideration by the patient of stopping immunosuppression, scabies was diagnosed as the cause. Treatment with oral ivermectin and topical permethrin resulted in complete resolution of symptoms within 1 week. Transplant physicians should consider common causes of pruritus unrelated to transplantation; diagnostic skin lesions of scabies may be absent.