Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)

You are probably visiting this page because you’ve spotted in your medical record a new diagnosis of chronic kidney disease (CKD). This can sound quite scary but shouldn’t be.

This is calculated by the local lab by taking your kidney blood test results and estimating your kidney function based on that. It uses your body surface area to work this out. This is essentially all your skin surface added together, laid flat and the measured. Obviously, we can’t do this on everyone, so it uses standardised readings for your age and sex.  In most patients with CKD their kidney blood tests remain the same and as they get older the estimated surface area changes resulting in a change in their kidney function. These changes are subtle and occur over time, which is why GPs are not very good at recording the diagnosis in your record. However, our automated our systems undertake the necessary monitoring without this based on your last results. For other people it may be other conditions such as high blood pressure or Diabetes has resulted in protein loss from the kidney with otherwise good kidney function.

We monitor your blood tests and check the amount of protein in your urine (it is critical that this is a sample first thing in the morning in the absence of infection amongst other things and because of contaminants we often ask for a repeat to confirm the result). How often we do the blood test is dictated by your kidney function and ranges from every few months to once a year.

If we see a sudden decline or change in your kidneys, we will contact you to discuss further. It is often temporary due to other factors for example dehydration and more often than not just requires a repeat test.

For more information on CKD, symptoms, treatment and prevention please visit https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/kidney-disease/. Please note symptoms are rare outside advanced disease and are common symptoms anyway, often with a simpler explanation.