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Chronic Renal Failure

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"In 2009, there were 116,395 new kidney failure diagnoses, 571,414 people living with kidney failure and 90,118 deaths among people with kidney failure ". (1) Renal failure is a type of disease that happened to kidneys and prevent them from working properly. Renal failure can occur as an acute or chronic renal failure. Chronic renal failure describes abnormal kidneys structure and loss of kidneys function. It is often accompany with other conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, it can be unrecognized because of the existence of other diseases and lack of symptoms.(2) In fact, chronic renal failure happened and developed slowly in three stages, which are diminished renal reserve, renal insufficiency, and end stage renal disease.

The first stage of chronic renal failure is called diminished renal reserve. During this stage the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), the best test to measure the level of kidneys function that doctors use to determine the stage of the disease, drops from 90-60 ml/min of normal(3). At this stage, patients with diminished renal reserve have moderate kidney function, so they …show more content…

During this stage, patients usually have GFR less than 15 ml/min, which implies that the kidneys permanently fail to work.(3) As a result of lost kidney function, patients often experience varied symptoms, such as excessive thirst. In addition, it can cause damage to other organs of different systems, and sometimes it helps to make some diseases getting worse. For instance, "end stage disease patients have a high cardiovascular morality rate". (5 ) However, this stage can be treated by either transplant or hemodialysis according to the situation of the patients. "the number of patients with kidney failure treated by dialysis and transplantation has increased dramatically in United States from 209,000 in 1991 to 470,000 in

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