ESRD

From a new article, published by Nephrology News and Issues, comes a provocative call for more specific standards of care in nephrology. As of now, the standard of care for the majority of kidney-failure patients is to follow a similar treatment plan, regardless of the cause for their kidney failure. Yet, according to research conducted at Stanford University School of Medicine, this approach is not enough. In fact—it could even be dangerous.

Researchers used data from over 84,000 patients, who between 1996 and 2011, suffered end-stage kidney disease due to one of six major glomerular disease types. The results were shocking. Mortality ranged all the way from 4% per year for patients with subtype, IgA nephropathy, to 16% per year for patients with subtype, vasculitis. Furthermore, patients with lupus nephritis were almost 2x as likely to die as those with IgA nephropathy. In other words, the specific type of glomerular disease determined how long a patient lived after developing kidney failure. As one researcher put it, “when you divide patients according to their glomerular disease subtype, you actually see a whole spectrum of outcomes (O’Shaughnessy).” And yet, the current standard of care is to follow a similar treatment plan for most kidney-failure patients, regardless of cause.

“We showed that a patient’s cause of kidney failure is strongly associated with their risk of dying after starting dialysis or receiving a kidney transplant.” Thus, treatment can no longer be generalized and non-specific. Medical professionals cannot ignore the cause of kidney failure and proceed with treatment as though all kidney failures are one and the same. The cause of kidney failure cannot be forgotten. Rather, it should be the stepping point from which treatments are determined, and tailored toward disease-specific risks. More so, further research is necessary to determine why these survival disparities exit from one patient to the next. If medical professionals begin to take into consideration what caused the kidneys to fail in the first place, it could possibly improve the patient’s quality of life and even increase their life span following kidney-failure.

To read more, visit: http://www.nephrologynews.com/study-shows-importance-of-cause-of-kidney-failure-when-planning-future-treatment/