Overview

The kidneys are a pair of bean-shaped organs that lie on either side of the spine in the lower middle of the back. Each kidney contains approximately one million filtering units called nephrons. Each nephron is made of a glomerulus and a tubule. A glomerulus is a capillary tuft that performs the first step in filtering blood to form urine.

Chronic kidney disease is gradually becoming the main chronic non-communicable disease, which threatens human being's health. One of the unfortunate realities for patients with chronic kidney disease is that they are at a much greater risk for cardiovascular disease than the general population. This is because kidney patients have higher incidences of many major risk factors, such as diabetes or hypertension.

Chronic kidney disease is also known as chronic renal disease. It is a progressive disease over a long period. The symptoms of worsening kidney functions are unspecific, and might include feeling generally unwell and experiencing a reduced appetite. Chronic kidney disease occurs when your kidneys are damaged and no longer work as well as well.

Normally, healthy kidneys remove waste from the blood. In addition to removing wastes and fluid from your body, the kidneys perform these other important regulations: make red blood cells, regulate your body water and other chemicals in your blood such as sodium, potassium, phosphorus and calcium, regulate blood pressure, and remove drugs toxins, promote strong bones, maintaining acid-base homeostasis, concentrating urine. The kidneys receive blood from the paired renal arteries, and drain into the paired renal veins. Each kidney excretes urine into a ureter, itself a paired structure that empties into the urinary bladder. This is important because the kidneys' main role is to filter water soluble waste products from the blood. The other attachment of the kidneys are at their functional endpoints the ureters, which lies more medial and runs down to the trigone of urinary bladder.

Kidney disease is most often caused by diabetes mellitus or hypertention (high blood pressure). Diabetes and hypertention damage the blood vessels in the kidneys, so the kidneys are not able to filter the blood as well as they should. Usually this damage occurs gradually over many years. As more and more blood vessels are damaged, the kidneys eventually stop working.

Kidney disease is progressive. Kidney disease does not go away. Instead, it usually gets worse over time. Kidney disease can lead into kidney failure, at which point dialysis or a kidney transplant is needed. Kidney disease can be treated if detected early. The right treatment management can help prevent further kidney damage and slow down kidney disease.