What Are The 5 Stages Of Kidney Failure

What Are The Kidneys And Their Work?

The kidneys are the organs that filter and remove waste from your blood. They also help regulate blood pressure, balance the electrolytes in your body, and produce hormones that help control your blood sugar levels. Let us explore What Are The 5 Stages Of Kidney Failure.

Kidneys help you maintain a healthy blood pressure because they release a hormone called renin when they sense high blood pressure. Renin causes your kidneys to make more angiotensin, which causes your arteries to constrict and sends more blood back to your heart, lowering your blood pressure.

The kidneys also send out another hormone called norepinephrine, which increases the amount of salt and water you excrete in the urine, helping you lower your fluid body and blood volume. When a kidney works properly, it filters about 120-150 quarts of fluid every 24 hours and produces about 1-2 quarts of urine daily.

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What Is Kidney Failure?

Kidney failure is when your kidneys are no longer filtering your blood properly. This means that waste products and extra fluid build up in your body, leading to symptoms like swelling, fatigue, nausea and vomiting.

Kidney failure is when your kidneys aren’t working properly. When you’re healthy, your kidneys filter waste out of your blood and urine. But if something goes wrong with your kidneys, they can’t do that job anymore. Kidney failure happens when the number of wastes in your blood gets too high and can’t be removed by your kidneys.

Renal Insufficiency

If you have kidney failure, you have a disease called renal insufficiency (or renal failure). This means you have trouble getting rid of waste products from your body. When these waste products build up, they can cause problems with other organs and systems in your body.

Kidney Injury

AKI is sometimes called “acute renal failure” or “acute kidney injury.” This means that there has been a sudden change in how well the kidneys work over a short period.

It’s usually caused by an infection or other illness or injury that leads to inflammation in one or both kidneys a condition called pyelonephritis or an injury to one or both kidneys caused by trauma or surgery (known as post-operative hemorrhage).

What Is CKD?

CKD is a disease that affects your kidneys. It is a slow process, and it can lead to kidney failure. People with CKD have damaged kidneys that are not working as well as they should. There are stages of CKD: Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3- stage 4 and 5.

As you move through these stages, your body will begin to lose its ability to filter waste from your blood. This means that toxins build up in your body over time which can cause serious health problems such as chronic disease or anemia (a lack of healthy red blood cells).

Five Stages Of Kidney Failure

Kidney failure is when the kidneys can no longer filter and excrete waste products from the blood. The kidneys have many vital functions, including removing excess fluid and helping balance blood pressure.

There are five stages of kidney failure:

Stage 1

Stage 1 is also known as chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage 1. In this stage, blood tests show that your kidney function is reduced but not yet below normal levels.

This can gradually lead to kidney failure. It is often a result of diabetes, high blood pressure, and other conditions.

Kidneys are responsible for cleaning the blood by removing waste and extra bodily fluid. The kidneys filter about 120-150 quarts of blood each day. The two kidneys are located near the middle of the back, one on each side of your spine.

Each kidney has about one million nephrons which act as filters to clean about 180 quarts of blood every day. The nephrons remove excess fluid, electrolytes (sodium and potassium), creatinine, and urea from the bloodstream. In chronic kidney disease (CKD), there is a gradual loss in function or decrease in the number or both nephrons in one or both kidneys, leading to ESRD.

Stage 2

In this stage, blood tests show that your kidney function is reduced but not yet below normal levels.

CKD Stage 2 is the second stage of chronic kidney disease, which may be early or moderate. CKD stage 2 means you have mild to an average loss of kidney function.

You may decrease your glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and the amount of fluid your kidneys filter each minute. This can affect the amount of protein and waste products in your urine. You may also have swelling in your feet and ankles, known as edema. In addition, many people with CKD stage 2 develop high blood pressure (hypertension).

Stage 3

CKD Stage 3 is the third stage of chronic kidney disease. It is also known as proteinuric kidney disease or renal insufficiency.

In this stage, the kidneys function only 30-59% of normal functions. Patients with CKD stage 3 will have a creatinine level above 1.5 mg/dL and may have other signs and symptoms of kidney disease, including fatigue, swelling, fluid retention, abdominal discomfort or pain, nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite. Patients with CKD stage 3 are at increased risk for complications such as high blood pressure, heart failure, and stroke.

These complications can be worsened by medications that cause potassium depletion or accumulation of sodium in the bloodstream (hypertension). Patients may also need to restrict sodium intake to avoid further increases in blood pressure.

During CKD stage 3, treatment goals focus on reducing medication doses that cause electrolyte imbalances which may worsen symptoms of kidney disease such as fatigue and weakness. This can help reduce side effects from medications used to treat high blood pressure or reduce swelling caused by excess fluid retention in the body’s tissues (edema).

Stage 4

CKD stage 4 is the end of the line. If you’re at this stage, your kidneys are pretty much shot. They can’t process waste anymore, and they can’t maintain your electrolyte levels, either. If you have CKD stage 4, you’ll need dialysis to keep your body going.

CKD Stage 4 is a serious condition. It’s characterized by kidney damage and failure, which means your kidneys cannot filter out the products that build up in the blood.

The symptoms of this stage can include:

Anemia – which is when you have too few red blood cells or hemoglobin in your body
Blood pressure problems
Bone disease – like osteoporosis, which causes bones to become weak and brittle
Fatigue – feeling tired all the time and not able to do things like you used to be able to do
High potassium levels in the blood – can lead to a fast heartbeat, muscle weakness, numbness or tingling in the hands or feet, constipation, nausea, and vomiting. High urea nitrogen levels in the urine – high levels of urea nitrogen can cause nausea and vomiting.

Stage 5

The end-stage renal disease occurs when your kidneys no longer work well enough to keep waste products from building up in your blood and causing serious health problems (called uremia).

Symptoms include weakness; fatigue; loss of appetite; nausea; vomiting; itching; soreness in the abdomen; muscle cramps; confusion; sleepiness; confusion or coma; fast breathing rate for a person’s age and activity level (less than 12 breaths per minute); chest pain with deep breaths (angina); leg swelling that does not go away when lying down for several hours.

CKD stage 5 is the final stage of kidney disease. You have lost 85-90% of your kidney function, and your kidneys can no longer filter blood properly. The symptoms at this stage are highly variable from one person to another.

The most common symptom is fatigue. Other symptoms include muscle cramps and pain, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, high blood pressure (hypertension), increased urination at night (nocturia), itching around the eyes (ocular pruritus), headaches, confusion or memory loss (mental status change), excessive thirst (polydipsia), hypokalemia, hypoalbuminemia.

Symptoms Of Chronic Kidney Disease CKD

Feeling tired all the time
Swelling in your ankles and feet
Headaches
Nausea or vomiting
Swelling in the legs and feet
Decreased appetite
Dry mouth
Itchy skin
Increased thirst
High blood pressure
Unexplained weight loss
Changes in the color of your urine

Kidney Failure Treatments

There are two types of treatments

Dialyses
Kidney transplant

Dialyses

You may need dialysis when you have chronic kidney disease (CKD). Dialysis is a treatment that uses a machine to filter the blood when your kidneys can’t do it on their own. There are two types of dialysis: hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. Both types remove waste

Hemodialysis:

It is the most common treatment for kidney failure. It removes debris and excess bodily fluid by filtering them out of the blood and into the bladder. The blood is filtered through a special membrane called a semipermeable membrane, which separates the water and waste from the clean blood that goes back into your body. This process takes 4 to 5 hours per session, typically lasting from 2-4 hours

Peritoneal Dialysis:

this treatment uses a special type of suction machine called a peritoneal dialysis machine or PD machine, that draws fluid out of your abdomen (peritoneum) through a tube called an access catheter and then back into your abdomen after it has been cleaned, using chemicals called dialysate that is infused into your abdominal cavity via another tube called a drain catheter.

This process usually takes about 3 hours per session, lasting up to 6 hours 3. Both types of dialysis use special solutions called dialysate that contain special chemicals called ultrafiltration.

Kidney transplant

A kidney transplant is when one or both kidneys from another person are placed in your body to work as your new kidneys. If you get a new kidney from someone who has died, it’s called deceased donor transplantation (DKT). If you get a new kidney from someone who is still alive, it’s called living donor transplantation (LDT).

A kidney transplant is the best treatment option for CKD. Renal transplantation is the most helpful treatment for this disease. It can help you live a longer, healthier life with fewer complications and more freedom from dialysis.

The transplantation is the only way to get rid of the underlying cause of your kidney disease. When you receive a kidney from a living donor, you will no longer have to take medications or undergo dialysis treatments to manage your condition. Your new kidney will immediately begin working with your remaining kidney, allowing you to regain your health and enjoy an active lifestyle.

Causes of kidney failure

There are several causes of CKD. These include:

Diabetes

Diabetes is another common cause of CKD. High blood sugar levels can damage the kidneys, causing them to stop working properly.

High blood pressures

Also, HBP is a contributing factor in it, as it causes damage to your blood vessels, making it harder for your kidneys to filter out waste products from your bloodstream.

High cholesterol levels

High cholesterol levels can lead to chronic kidney disease or CKD. This is because hypercholesterolemia leads to the build-up of plaque in the arteries. The plaque can then lead to a narrowing of the arteries, which can cause blood flow to be reduced.

Long-term use of soft drinks:

The sugar content in soft drinks is a major cause of kidney failure. Most of us don’t even realize how much sugar we consume daily through soft drinks alone. Apart from increasing the risk of diabetes, it also affects our kidneys in a very negative way. Is Soda Bad For You?

Obesity:

Obesity increases the risk of hypertension and diabetes, leading to chronic kidney disease if not treated promptly. If you have been diagnosed with obesity, you should immediately start treating it as soon as possible; otherwise, it might cause more serious health issues.

Artificial sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners are one of the most usual roots of CKD. The reason is how our bodies absorb sugar and how artificial sweeteners interact with those processes.

Normally, when we eat sweet things, our bodies release insulin to help us process the sugar. Insulin helps remove the glucose from our bloodstream and stores it in muscles and fat cells for later use as energy.

But when we eat too much sugar (or anything else broken down into glucose), too much insulin is released. And when too much insulin is released all at once, it can cause damage to our kidneys. This damage worsens kidney function and can eventually lead to CKD.