OBJECTIVES: Home dialysis is associated with significant benefits for patients and healthcare systems, but its usage varies greatly across Europe. Population characteristics (especially age) are often proposed as an explanation of this variation. The aim of this analysis was to estimate the number of potential peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients based on the current age distribution of end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients in 14 European countries and the highest usage of PD per age group among these countries (assuming health status per age groups is similar across countries). METHODS: The age distribution of ESRD patients and PD usage per age group were extracted from the 2009 European Renal Association – European Dialysis and Transplant Association registry report. The highest PD usage values in each age group of incident and prevalent patients were applied to the overall age distribution of ESRD patients in the 14 countries to obtain an estimate of the potential number of PD patients. Differences with the current 2009 numbers were computed. RESULTS: Overall in 2009, there were 5005 incident PD patients (15.8% of ESRD, 16.5% of dialysis patients) and 17175 prevalent patients (7.2% of ESRD, 12.2% of dialysis patients). The highest proportion of PD patients in the 20-44, 45-64, 65-74, and 75 + age groups were respectively 55%, 39%, 34% and 32% of incident and 11%, 14%, 17% and 26% of prevalent ESRD patients. Applying the highest proportions to the current age distribution of ESRD patients showed that an additional 6764 incident and 22272 additional prevalent ESRD patients could potentially be treated at home with PD. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis shows that in the group of 14 countries studied, provided health status per age group is similar across countries, several thousand more ESRD patients could be treated at home and benefit from the flexibility and autonomy of such treatment.