{"id":4202,"date":"2020-04-22T10:56:49","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T10:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edren.org\/ren\/education\/resources\/kidney-disease-in-3-minutes\/"},"modified":"2020-12-17T08:11:19","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T08:11:19","slug":"kidney-disease-in-3-minutes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edren.org\/ren\/education\/other-resources\/kidney-disease-in-3-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Kidney disease in 3 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do the kidneys do?<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

They filter the blood to remove waste products, and to get rid of excess water and other things that you eat and drink.\u00a0 Healthy kidneys filter well over 100mls of blood every minute.\u00a0\u00a0That’s about 150 litres, or 33 gallons (40 US\u00a0gallons)\u00a0every day.\u00a0 This is known as the GFR, short for Glomerular Filtration Rate.\u00a0 Commonly we use a simple blood test to get an estimate of GFR, as is it tricky to measure GFR accurately.<\/p>\n

eGFR is an estimate of kidney filtration<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

eGFR is an\u00a0estimate<\/em>\u00a0of how well your kidneys are filtering. \u00a0It is calculated from the result of a blood test (creatinine)\u00a0along with your age and sex.\u00a0\u00a0As normal eGFR is round about 100, the eGFR gives you an approximate ‘percentage function’.\u00a0\u00a0So\u00a0 if your eGFR is 50, your kidneys are probably filtering at\u00a0about<\/em>\u00a050% of normal. \u00a0 It’s very approximate though, and there are times when it can’t be very reliable at all. It is not accurate at near-normal levels, so many labs report eGFR over 60 as just “>60” (more than 60).<\/p>\n

What are the signs my kidneys aren’t working properly?<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Most people with kidney trouble don’t have any symptoms at all.\u00a0 Most of the diseases that cause pain (urine infections and kidney stones are examples) only rarely cause kidney failure. \u00a0Kidney failure only starts to cause much trouble when you’re down to 30% kidney function or less.\u00a0 Even then the symptoms aren’t very obviously coming from the kidney.\u00a0 More often high blood pressure or abnormal urine tests or something else leads to a blood test being done, and that shows it up.<\/p>\n

Some of the signs of kidney trouble that you read about are very\u00a0late<\/em>\u00a0signs, and not very helpful for picking up early kidney disease.<\/p>\n

What is CKD?<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

CKD means Chronic Kidney Damage.\u00a0\u00a0It means your kidneys aren’t 100% because<\/p>\n