During the past 3 years, the basis of a German Renal Registry has been established. An agreement between end-stage renal disease (ESRD) therapy providers, insurance companies and the government has been reached to fund and support the registry office and its electronic data base. An overall acceptable compliance has been achieved to provide data voluntarily, although in the future the data submission will have to be mandatory to achieve complete data sampling within an acceptable time frame. In Germany, 713 patients per million population (p.m.p.) are on renal replacement therapy (RRT). The incidence of new patients commencing RRT is 156 p.m.p. These numbers are comparable with those reported from other European countries such as France, Italy and Spain, but significantly lower than those reported from the US or Japan. More than 92% of all dialysis patients are treated by haemodialysis and only a limited number with peritoneal dialysis. Approximately 25% of the patients have a functioning kidney graft. The transplantation rate of 25 p.m.p, is far from sufficient if compared with Spain, Austria or the US. Although an increasing number of diabetic patients commenced RRT, the percentage, i.e. similar to 30%, is less than in the US or Japan. The annual growth of the population on renal replacement cannot currently be given precisely because the database is still limited, but it seems to be similar to 3-4%.
