Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a highly common complication and the first cause of death in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) on haemodialysis (HD). In this population, mortality due to CVD is 20 times higher than in the general population and the majority of maintenance HD patients have CVD. This is likely due to ventricular hypertrophy as well as non-traditional risk factors, such as chronic volume overload, anaemia, inflammation, oxidative stress, chronic kidney disease-mineral bone disorder and other aspects of the 'uraemic milieu'. Better understanding the impact of these numerous factors on CVD would be an important step for prevention and treatment. In this review we focus non-traditional CVD risk factors in HD patients.