CKD Patient Information

Moderate Chronic Kidney Disease

What are my kidneys?

Your kidneys are two bean shaped organs that sit below your rib cage, either side of your spine. Your blood flows through your kidneys in blood vessels, which allows the kidneys to filter the blood and remove waste products and water. This makes urine.

Your kidneys are important for maintaining the correct balance of chemicals in your body, which is necessary for your nerves, muscles and bones to stay healthy. Other clever things your kidneys can do include helping to control your blood pressure.

What is Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)?

“Chronic” means long term. “Kidney disease” means your kidneys are not working as well as they used to, meaning your kidneys are not filtering the blood as well as they could, and they can start to leak protein into your urine.

In most patients, CKD is a mild condition with no symptoms at all. It is often linked to getting older. Or it can also be due to a long-term disease which is affecting your kidneys. This is different to Acute Kidney Injury, which is short term and reversible damage to the kidneys, usually due to dehydration, infection or some other reversible cause.

The biggest risk of CKD is not that your kidneys will fail. It’s that kidney changes cause bad cholesterol to build up in the blood steam. This could cause a stroke or heart attack.

Health advice with CKD

The majority of patients can control CKD by:

* Reducing their cholesterol by taking a statin medication,

* Controlling their blood pressure,

* Managing their diabetes (if previously diagnosed by a doctor),

* Stopping smoking,

* Attending annual blood tests and urine tests to monitor their kidneys

* Avoiding the use of ibuprofen and similar ‘NSAID’ medications.

I would also invite you to look on the NHS Website and other useful resources for more details.

 https://kidneycareuk.org/

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/kidney-disease/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTfa9Tia1A4&t=42s

Your next steps

We understand that this may all sound concerning, however we wanted to reassure that we are here to help. If you would like to discuss in more detail, please click on the eConsult link on the home page of our website to request an appointment with one of the clinical team members. Here you will be asked a number of questions first, to which you should select ‘Administrative help’ alternatively you can call the patient services team, who will be able to help you with your query when mentioning the CKD text.

If you are not already on a statin tablet, I would strongly encourage you to start a medication called Atorvastatin which will lower your cholesterol. This can be discussed with us when you are seen.

If you are not already on Ramipril/Lisinopril/Candesartan/Losartan please make an appointment using the e-consult link to discuss this with the clinical team.

We would also suggest regular routine blood and urine tests, that will be arranged, if due by our medicines management team or by my colleague at your appointment if you make one.