US kidney failure rates stabilize, ending a 20-...( increase awareness coincided with these...),Health

NKDEP encourages early diagnosis and management by increasing awareness about:

• the connection between diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease
• strategies proven to prevent or delay kidney failure
• estimating kidney function (eGFR) to find kidney disease earlier
• efforts to standardize testing for kidney disease and encourage more labs to automatically report eGFR, and
• time-saving tools for health professionals at www.nkdep.nih.gov, including eGFR calculators that eliminate most of the work to estimate kidney function; and a letter template, which automatically calculates patient-specific eGFR, generates a list of next steps based on kidney disease stage and is designed to improve communication between kidney specialists and primary care physicians.

Despite incremental successes in preventing kidney failure and in improving health and survival of people who have it already, the increasing and aging U.S. population means that more people than ever before are getting and living with the disease. In 2003, nearly 537,000 people received dialysis or a kidney transplant. The cost to Medicare was $18.1 billion, with another $9.2 billion borne by private insurers and patients. Another 10 million people in the United States have earlier kidney disease; most don't know they have it, let alone that the disease increases the risk for premature death, heart attacks, strokes, and other problems.

The research also found both encouraging and discouraging news about the quality of care for people with chronic kidney disease (CKD), an earlier stage that precedes kidney failure. Tests to find kidney disease at the earliest, most-treatable stages are not widely used. Only 10 percent of the general Medicare population had a blood test and only 5 percent had urine tested for kidney disease.
'"/>

Contact: Mary M. Harris
Mary_Harris@nih.gov
301-435-8114
NIH/National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
11-Oct-2005