Early Detection of Kidney Disorder

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is often nicknamed the silent killer as it often shows no symptoms, especially during its earlier phases. The disease is chronic by nature and cannot be re-normalized, resulting in long-lasting suffering.

In early phase CKD, no distinctive symptoms are visible the symptoms experienced by the patients may be dominated by the symptoms of base disease that causes CKD. The symptoms can be: frequent fatigue, reduced energy, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, sleep disorder, muscle cramp (especially at night), frequent urination during the night, swelling of the feet/ankles, itchy and dry skin, swelling around the eyes (in the morning). It may also cause bone pain, bleeding in the digestive system and, in advanced phase, seizure, and consciousness disorder.

As the disease shows no symptoms during its early phase, early detection of CKD is recommended especially for those considered as being in the high-risk group.

In Indonesia, the major cause of CKD is diabetes mellitus. The second biggest cause is hypertension (high blood pressure), while the third is stones in the kidney/urinary tract that is commonly accompanied by kidney/urinary tract infection. Other causes include autoimmune disease, long-term use of medicines especially rheumatic medicines, congenital kidney abnormalities like polycystic kidney.

The test to conduct for detection of CKD includes quantitative urine albumin, urine sediment and creatinine or Cystatin C. Cystatin C test is a relatively new type of analysis and can be said as better than creatinine to determine the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), which is the amount of blood filtered by the glomerulus (the filtering unit within the kidney) in a minute. The eGFR value describes the kidney function.