Blog Post
Kidney Disease: What Is It?
March 31, 2023
Introduction to kidney disease?
If already a kidney patient, maintaining your current kidney function is essential to your quality of life. As kidney function starts to decline and the kidneys are no longer able to efficiently filter and remove waste from the blood and your symptoms worsens. Kidney disease that becomes progressively worse is known as chronic kidney disease, also called CKD.
Chronic kidney disease has five stages, starting with a mildly damaged kidney and ending with kidney failure. At each stage, it is important to take steps to slow down the damage to your kidneys and keep the kidneys workin as long as possible. Treatments such as medications and dialysis can prevent you from progressing to stage 5 kidney disease.
Each stage is based on the eGFR number and has different symptoms and treatments. In the early stages (Stages 1–3), your kidneys are still able to filter waste out of your blood. In the later stages (Stages 4–5), your kidneys must work harder to filter your blood and may stop working altogether.
The five stages of CKD are highlighted below.
Stage 1: normal to highly functioning kidney with GFR >90 mL/min >90%
Stage 2: mild decrease in kidney function with 60–89 mL/min 60–89%
Stage 3A: mild-to-moderate decrease in kidney function with 45–59 mL/min 45–59%
Stage 3B: mild-to-moderate decrease in kidney function with 30–44 mL/min 30–44%
Stage 4: severe decrease in kidney function with 15–29 mL/min 15–29%
Stage 5: kidney failure with <15 mL/min <15%
End stage renal disease (ESRD) or kidney failure occurs when the kidneys are functioning at 15% or less (stage 5). When kidneys have failed they can no longer filter the blood properly enough to meet the needs of the body. At this point or treatment, patients must either go on dialysis or on the transplant list to await a new kidney.
Some symptoms may be gradual, while others come on quickly, so it’s important to check in regularly with your doctor to manage your kidney disease, even if you feel fine. Symptoms you may experience as your kidneys worsens includes:
- lower back pain or flank pain
- fatigue or weakness
- swelling, especially in your hands or feet, or under your eyes
- a bad taste in your mouth, or food doesn’t taste good
- feeling cold
- poor concentration
- shortness of breath
- itching skin
- cramping in hands and legs
- nausea and vomiting
- foamy urine
- nose bleeds
Monitoring and tracking your symptoms can help both you and your doctor better manage your kidney disease. If your doctor recommends it, you can monitor your blood pressure at home, pulse and weight. You can also keep track of test results (such as your eGFR and urine albumin values) or other details from doctor visits to monitor your long-term kidney health.
One of the easiest ways to track symptoms is with pen and paper. You can take notes by hand or use a note app on your smartphone. Be sure to include the date, time, symptoms, severity of symptoms, and anything that might have contributed to them. You’ll also want to write down what improves symptoms or makes them worse.
Those who prefer not to write can use voice memos to track symptoms. You can use voice recording apps or a handheld voice recorder to log the same information above. You can also bring your notes or voice memos with you to your appointments.
Tracking your test results is just as important as tracking your symptoms. You’ll want to keep either hard or electronic copies of your medication lists, test results and other reports from all doctor visits. This will help you remember things as well as makes it easy to share your health information with your doctor. This can be especially helpful if you’re visiting multiple doctors.
If your physician does not have an electronic health records system that you have access to, consider scanning any hard copies of paperwork from doctor visits or test results and storing them in one folder on your computer or cloud drive. If needed, you’ll be able to easily access your records, print additional copies, or email them to a doctor’s office.