What Is Chronic Kidney Disease?

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a long-term condition. The kidneys get. Slowly lose their ability to clean waste and extra fluid from the blood. This damage must last for least three months to be called chronic.

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Chronic Kidney Disease

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What Is Chronic Kidney Disease?

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a long-term condition. The kidneys get. Slowly lose their ability to clean waste and extra fluid from the blood. This damage must last for at least three months to be called chronic.

CKD often develops slowly over the years. It can eventually lead to complete kidney failure, also known as end-stage disease (ESRD). Many people have no symptoms in the stages. Noticeable signs appear when the kidneys are severely damaged.

The kidneys do more than filter waste. They help control blood pressure, keep bones healthy and make hormones for making blood cells. CKD can disrupt all these functions.

When Does A Kidney Disorder Turn Chronic?

A kidney disorder is called chronic when kidney problems last for at least three months.

The National Institutes of Health says this three-month rule is the medical definition. It is used to tell Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) from Acute Kidney Injury (AKI). AKI is often sudden. Can be reversed.

Symptoms Of CKD

Common Symptoms During Stages 1-3

  • Feeling the urge to pee often at night
  • Froth in urine
  • Swelling of the feet. Ankles
  • High Blood Pressure
  • Fatigue

Advance Stage Signs

  • Dry skin
  • Itching
  • Feeling short of breath
  • Foul-mouth smell
  • Intense thirst
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Loss of appetite
  • Abrupt weight loss
  • Sleep issues
  • Restless leg syndrome

Stages Of CKD

Doctors put Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) into five stages. They base it on how the kidneys filter waste. This is measured by the estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR).

Stages 1–2: Stage

In these stages, the kidneys are still working well. Most people have no symptoms.

  • Stage one (eGFR 90+): The general sign is that the kidneys are functioning normally. However, deep down, advanced tests may reveal that there is beginning signs of kidney damage.
  • Stage two (60–89): Under the second stage, the evidence that your kidneys are beginning to damage is profound with some part of it also affecting kidney functions.

Stage 3: Moderate Stage

Stage 3 is often when CKD is first diagnosed. It is split into two sub stages:

  • Stage 3a (45–59): Expect a mild to moderate loss of function. Patients usually develop signs of fatigue or mild swelling may appear.
  • Stage 3b (eGFR 30–44): here, the kidney functions are already more than 50% damaged. The resulting complications at this stage are also severe for your health, such as anaemia, which becomes more likely, and bone disease.

Stages 4–5: Advanced Stage

This is the stage where your entire remaining life is under threat, as death is a possibility. Remember that these stages need urgent and immediate help from experienced doctors.

  • Stage four (eGFR 15–29): At this stage, you are almost at the point of having a kidney failure.
  • Stage 5 (eGFR <15): Kidney Failure (End-Stage Renal Disease). At this stage, the kidney itself has completely lost its ability of blood purification and urine formation. For this, your only hope to survive is to depend on machines like dialyzers.

Causes Of CKD

Primary Causes

1. Diabetes: Studies have shown that severely high levels of blood sugar often cause the maximum damage to your kidneys other than any organ in your body. It is because the kidneys have minute network of arteries, which are blocked slowly as sugar crystals block the passage.

2. High Blood Pressure (Hypertension): Persistent high pressure. Narrows the blood vessels. This includes the vessels in the kidneys. Due to narrow passage or flow, the kidneys are not able to remove all the harmful substances from your blood anymore.

3. Glomerulonephritis: A condition affects the basic filtering units of the kidneys known as glomerulus. Under this condition, these filtering units suffer from swelling hampering their functions and activities.

Other Medical Conditions

1. Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD): As the name suggests, the problem is that the kidneys have multiple cysts developed in them.

2. Obstructions: it includes health issues like kidney stones, an enlarged prostate BPH, or some types of cancers that urine backflow and retention which is harmful for the kidney tissues in the end.

3. Autoimmune Diseases: this condition is where the body itself is silently killing the kidneys without you even knowing. Yes, under this condition the immune cells of your body have gone rogue and starts attacking health cells and tissues of the kidneys.

4. Recurrent Infections: Sometimes, severe infections occurring repeatedly can cause tissue scarring in the kidneys and render them useless, not able to filter out blood.

Medication and Toxins

➦ NSAIDs: These are medicines, some types of painkillers, whose use in the end is not safe for your kidney health, causing blockage inside the kidneys.

➦ Other Drugs: There are many other types of medicines, like cancer chemotherapy agents, which can cause long-term damage to your kidneys.

Lifestyle and Demographic Risk Factors

As you can understand, these factors include problems that lie within your lifestyle and way of life affecting kidney and renal functions-

➦ Obesity: an increase in lipid profile in the kidneys, affecting the tissues and cells inside and putting excess pressure on the kidneys.

➦ Smoking: As most of you may know, excess smoking makes nicotine deposits in the arteries of the kidney, causing blockage and damage in the end, giving rise to kidney failure.

Treating CKD

Mild Issues

Typically, up to stage 3, it is up to the doctors to slow down the extent or rate of damage to the kidneys with the help of suitable medicines.

Doctors recommend medicines to control:

They may recommend medicines like SGLT-2 inhibitors.

Moderate And Severe Issues

In Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)—specifically Stage 4 (eGFR 15–29) and Stage 5 (eGFR below 15)—the damage is typically permanent and irreversible. There is no “cure” that restores the kidneys to their original state. Life-sustaining treatments replace their function.

The usual options for the patient include:

  • Kidney transplant
  • Going through dialysis for the rest of life
  • Using medicines to control symptoms, like ACE inhibitors or SGLT2 inhibitors.

FAQs

What are some of the risk factors of CKD?
As we told you above, diabetes, high BP, heart problems, obesity, high cholesterol are some of the major problems that can go on and cause CKD in the end.
Can you tell me some complications of CKD?
A few complicated issues resulting from lack of proper treatment of CKD are anemia, risk of heart attack and stroke, bone disorders, fluid retention in body.
When to go to a urologist for CKD?
You need an attention from the urologists in case of physical blockage inside kidneys, or structural abnormalities or when symptoms get severe with time.
What is the method of diagnosis for CKD?
The doctors will generally do different kinds of tests like blood test, sugar test, kidney function test, urine tests and so on to find out if it is a case of CKD.