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Kidney360, p. 10.34067/KID.0006682020, 2021

DOI: 10.34067/kid.0006682020

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Does Whom Patients Sit Next to During Hemodialysis Affect Whether They Request a Living Donation?

This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

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Abstract

Background: The seating arrangement of in-center hemodialysis is conducive to patients forming a relationship and a social network. We examined how in-center hemodialysis clinic seating affected patients forming relationships, whether patients formed relationships with others who have similar transplant behaviors (homophily), and whether these relationships influenced patients (social contagion) to request a living donation from family and friends outside of the clinic. Methods: In this 30-month prospective cohort study, we observed the relationships of 46 hemodialysis patients in a hemodialysis clinic. Repeated participant surveys assessed in-center transplant discussions and living donor requests. A separable temporal exponential random graph model estimated how seating, demographics, in-center transplant discussions, and living donor requests affected relationship formation via sociality and homophily. We examined whether donation requests spread via social contagion using a susceptibility-infected model. Results: For every seat apart, the odds of participants forming a relationship decreased (OR 0.74, 95% confidence interval CI [0.61, 0.90], p = 0.002). Those who requested a living donation tended to form relationships more than those who did not (sociality, OR 1.6, CI 95% [1.02, 2.6]; p = 0.04). Participants who discussed transplantation in-center were more likely to form a relationship with another participant who discussed transplantation than with someone who did not discuss transplantation (homophily, OR 1.9, CI 95% [1.03, 3.5]; p = 0.04). Five of the 36 susceptible participants made a request after forming a relationship with another patient. Conclusions: Participants formed relationships with those whom they sat next to and had similar transplant behaviors. The observed increase in in-center transplant discussions and living donation requests by the hemodialysis clinic social network members was not because of social contagion. Instead, participants who requested a living donation were more social, formed more relationships within the clinic, and discussed transplantation with each other as a function of health-behavior homophily.