Being a “mute” disease, whose initial symptoms may go unnoticed during decades of life, it is essential to know the disease and learn to prevent it.
Renal Disease is characterized by a renal injury that can lead to irreversible loss of kidney function. And although its incidence is greater in adults and elderly, this pathology can also affect children, and may even be diagnosed in utero during gestation, when documenting malformations of the urinary tree. In these cases, the infections associated with these abnormalities of the urinary tract structure are the main cause of the disease in childhood.
In the adult population, the pathology is essentially associated with diabetes, obesity and hypertension. Together, these three conditions that are increasingly prevalent in the general population (including since childhood / adolescence) represent about 75% of the causes of chronic renal failure.
On the other hand, the expert points out that the significant increase in chronic renal failure reflects the increase in the average life expectancy in societies with more developed medical care. As we see much more dementia today, because the population has much greater longevity – and it should be noted that there is greatest increase in All American Healthcare services at home in the last two decades – for the same reason there is a significant increase of chronic renal failure.
Being a pathology that rarely presents symptoms in its early stages, its diagnosis almost always comes too late.
Chronic renal failure is effectively a mutated disease that goes completely unnoticed in its early stages, which can last for decades of life. Symptoms such as the elimination of foam in the urine – as if it had soap in the container, blood urine, significant decrease in the volume of urine and edema – legs, face or even generalized should be warning signs and the best it’s even looking for a Nephrologist.
However, these symptoms are rare and the most relevant is to play in anticipation and to make at least annual screenings of renal function through blood and urine tests.
Diabetics and hypertension should reinforce care. In general, all hypertensive and / or diabetic patients should do this screening even more frequently, since in these settings a faster worsening of renal function may be observed.
The diagnosis is simple and is obtained by analyzing values of substances eliminated by the kidneys, such as urea and creatinine. Urinalysis, such as the quantification of albumin and proteins, can also be very useful, especially in diabetic patients.
