Your Health Matters!
March 13 is World Kidney DayWorld Kidney Day is dedicated to raising awareness about kidney disease and the importance of prevention and early detection. Kidney disease, the ninth leading cause of death in the United States, is a costly disease – especially when it leads to kidney failure requiring dialysis or transplantation, and premature death.
Simply put, kidney disease can wreak havoc on the body. Without properly functioning kidneys, toxins are not cleansed from the system, resulting in persistent sickness and extreme fatigue. Patients with kidney disease often experience frequent hospitalizations to deal with the complications.
People with chronic kidney disease are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease and are actually more likely to die than to progress to kidney failure. In 2005, approximately 100,000 people began treatment for end-stage renal disease in the United States and nearly half a million were living on chronic dialysis or with a kidney transplant. However, the total burden of chronic kidney disease is much larger. Including earlier stages, 26 million people in the United States have chronic kidney disease, but only 1 in 5 of them are aware of it.
Of the new cases of end-stage renal disease in 2005, 71 percent had diabetes or hypertension as the primary cause. That’s why early detection and treatment make a difference. Among patients with diabetes and hypertension, controlling blood sugar and blood pressure have been shown to prevent or delay the progression of chronic kidney disease.
Due to the rapidly emerging public health threat of chronic kidney disease, this has become a major focus for the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. Sacred Heart’s own Katherine R. Tuttle, MD, medical director of the Providence Medical Research Center,participates in multiple national initiatives, including the National Kidney Disease Education Program, to help oversee kidney disease surveillance, health outcomes research and public health strategies for promoting kidney health.
To learn more about kidney disease, prevention and control, visit www.nkdep.nih.gov.
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