As many as 26 million Americans live with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at least 10.4 million (or 40%) don't even know they have it. Enter the estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR), which has become the preferred method for identifying people with CKD.
William Bennett, MD, FASN, of Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital (Portland, OR) and Editor of ASN's Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN) recently spoke with Richard Glassock, MD, from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA) about the pros and cons of this test. The conversation will be available via podcast through ASN's website at http://asn-online.org/publications/kidneynews/podcast.aspx and available on iTunes on Tuesday, September 22 (ASN Kidney News Podcast).
eGFR is most commonly calculated using the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) study equation ostensibly to provide a more clinically useful measure of kidney function than serum creatinine alone. The equation takes into account several factors like age, gender, and race that impact creatinine production. Analysis of blood samples for creatinine is commonly employed to evaluate kidney function and to diagnose chronic and acute diseases of the kidney. Kidney function tends to slowly decrease with normal aging after about age 30-40 years and if this normal decline is not taken into account for older persons, mainly women, the result will be that more individuals are falsely diagnosed with kidney disease.