The first edition of the Guidelines for the Construction and Repair of Vascular Access in Chronic Hemodialysis was published by the Japan Society for Dialysis Therapy (JSDT) in 2005, under Seiji Ohira, Chairman. Recently, many presentations making reference to the guidelines have appeared in conferences and journals. The 2011 version uses this first edition as a foundation and was formed with a collection of data following the publication of the first edition. During this time, in 2008, the JSDT conducted a survey on the conditions of vascular access (VA), where it found that native arteriovenous fistula (AVF) made up 89.7%, synthetic arteriovenous
grafts (AVGs) were 7.1%, superficialization 1.8%, other direct arterial puncture 0.1%, long-term indwelled catheters 0.5%, temporary venous catheters 0.5%, single-needle dialysis 0.2%, and other methods 0.1% (1). In a survey conducted 10 years earlier, in 1998, AVF usage was at 91.4%, AVGs were 4.8%, superficialization was 2.5%, external shunts 0.2%, and other methods 1.1% (2) (Table 1). In other words, with an increase in long-term dialysis cases and damage to native vessels due to advanced age, internal shunts with native vessels are on the decrease; this implies that the use of AVG will increase. In the 2008 survey, other methods made up
0.1%: catheters were not categorized within this survey but may have been included.