The relationship between exercise and the occurrence of abdominal wall complications in patients on peritoneal dialysis.

Background: The relationship between exercise and abdominal wall complications remains controversial in the general population and has rarely been studied in patients with peritoneal dialysis (PD). This study aims to investigate the association between exercise and abdominal wall complications in the PD population.

Methods: A retrospective data analysis of a prospective cohort. Abdominal wall complications were recorded during follow-up. Exercise characteristics were collected monthly by outpatient questionnaire, including whether the patient exercised, type of exercise, exercise duration, and exercise intensity. Competing risk models were used to evaluate the predictive power of exercise variables for the occurrence of abdominal wall complications.

Results: Among the 475 patients undergoing PD, 33 (6.9%) developed abdominal wall complications during a median follow-up of 46.0 months. A total of 377 (79.4%) patients engaged in regular exercise, with walking (99.5%) being the predominant form. Only 2 (0.5%) patients combined aerobic and resistance exercise. The median exercise duration was 210.0 min per week (interquartile range: 140.0-350.0 min). No exercise characteristics, including exercise participation, exercise duration per week, or exercise intensity, were found to be associated with abdominal wall complications in either univariate or multivariate competing risk analyses. Similarly, exercise variables showed no significant prognostic value in any subgroup analyses.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates for the first time that exercise, primarily in the form of aerobic activity at typical duration and intensity levels, does not increase the risk of abdominal wall complications in PD patients. Further research is needed to explore the effects of high-intensity aerobic exercise and resistance training in the PD population.

Trial Registration: This study did not involve any interventions, and all the data were obtained from the PDTAP database (Registration number: NCT03571451; Registration date: 2018-06-20). We adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki.