If renal insufficiency comes, can uremia be far behind? Today let’s talk about the significance of renal insufficiency in the treatment of kidney disease.

What is renal insufficiency?

Broadly speaking, renal insufficiency begins from kidney damage, namely the function of kidney metabolism, filtration, pH and electrolyte regulation declines. Simply speaking, once kidneys are damaged, it is renal insufficiency.

In the narrow sense, renal insufficiency is a stage in the development of kidney disease, and kidney disease can be roughly divided into 5 stages: inflammatory reaction stage, renal function compensation stage, renal insufficiency stage, renal failure stage, and uremia stage. It can be seen that renal insufficiency is the most critical period in the treatment of nephropathy and also an important stage that determines the development trend of nephropathy.

From the above, we can see that renal insufficiency does not mean you are near uremia. To diagnose renal insufficiency, there are three criteria, which can help you judge which stage is your kidney function at.

1. Serum creatinine

Creatinine is an important index to reflect kidney function. Usually creatinine elevation means at least half of kidney function is damaged. Serum creatinine at 178 umol/L - 442 umol/L can be diagnosed as renal insufficiency, with which patients often appear fatigue, nausea, loss of appetite and other obvious conditions. And their proteinuria and edema symptoms get worse, and blood pressure begins to increase.

2. Urea

Blood urea nitrogen is a nitrogenous compound in plasma except protein, which is excreted by glomerular filtration. When kidney function is impaired, there is an increase, but like creatinine, it is not very sensitive and occurs when the glomerular filtration rate (GFR) decreases by more than 50%. It can be determined by enzymatic method.

3. Cystatin C

Cystatin C is also an important marker of changes in glomerular filtration rate, which is absorbed by the proximal convoluted tubules and completely decomposed without reabsorption and returning to the blood. Therefore, its changes are completely determined by the glomerulus, and are not affected by other conditions such as age and gender. Compared with creatinine and urea nitrogen, Cystatin C is more sensitive. When it is slightly elevated, renal insufficiency can be considered.

Now you know the three criteria for diagnosing renal insufficiency. If you still have any other questions, please leave a message below or contact online doctor.