When you're facing a chronic kidney disease diagnosis, you need more than medical management—you need a care team that understands your concerns and helps you maintain the life you want to live.
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) affects as many as one in nine Americans and may be caused by diabetes, hypertension, glomerulonephritis, hereditary or urological diseases.
CKD is defined as kidney damage or a decrease in kidney function that persists over three months. The GFR (glomerular filtration rate) is a formula that uses age, race, gender and serum creatinine level to measure kidney function. Patients who have a GFR less than 60 ml/min/1.73 m2 for three months or more are diagnosed as having CKD. Kidney disease progresses as the number of nephrons (filtering units) diminish. However, it is possible to slow the progression of kidney disease at its various stages – with the goal, as often as possible, being to prevent the development of kidney failure requiring dialysis or kidney transplantation.
We understand that learning about chronic kidney disease can bring uncertainty about your future. That's exactly why our Northwest Florida specialists focus not just on slowing disease progression, but on creating personalized management plans that work with your daily routine and long-term goals.
The National Kidney Foundation’s Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative for Clinical Practice Guidelines on CKD outlines the stages for evaluation, classification and treatment strategy.
This universal classification system enables providers to develop an action plan tailored to the stage of the disease. Some key factors in managing CKD include nutrition, blood pressure monitoring, stress management and dialysis. Our goal is to identify and reduce the risk factors associated with loss of kidney function by creating an action plan and closely monitoring the GFR to determine the effectiveness of our efforts.
90 ml/min/1.73m2 Kidney damage with normal or high GFR
60 to 89 ml/min/1.73m2 Kidney damage with mild decreased GFR
30 to 59 ml/min/1.73m2 Moderately decreased GFR
15 to 29 ml/min/1.73m2 Severely decreased GFR
<15 ml/min/1.73m2 Kidney Failure
Kidney Disease develops when healthy kidney function slows down resulting in waste and excess fluid staying in the body. Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is defined as kidney damage or a decrease in kidney function below 60% of normal that persists over three months.
There are often no early warning symptoms; however, as CKD progresses, causes and symptoms may include:
There are some preventative measures you can take to decrease your risk of developing CKD.