Kidney disease

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Kidney disease
Other names	Renal disease, nephropathy
Pathologic kidney specimen showing marked pallor of the cortex, contrasting to the darker areas of surviving medullary tissue. The patient died with acute kidney injury.
Specialty	Nephrology, urology
Complications	Uremia, death

Kidney disease, or renal disease, technically referred to as nephropathy, is damage to or disease of a kidney. Nephritis is an inflammatory kidney disease and has several types according to the location of the inflammation. Inflammation can be diagnosed by blood tests. Nephrosis is non-inflammatory kidney disease. Nephritis and nephrosis can give rise to nephritic syndrome and nephrotic syndrome respectively. Kidney disease usually causes a loss of kidney function to some degree and can result in kidney failure, the complete loss of kidney function. Kidney failure is known as the end-stage of kidney disease, where dialysis or a kidney transplant is the only treatment option.

Chronic kidney disease is defined as prolonged kidney abnormalities (functional and/or structural in nature) that last for more than three months.^[1] Acute kidney disease is now termed acute kidney injury and is marked by the sudden reduction in kidney function over seven days.

Rates for both chronic kidney disease and mortality have increased, associated with the rising prevalence of diabetes and the ageing global population.^[2][3] The World Health Organization has reported that "kidney diseases have risen from the world’s nineteenth leading cause of death to the ninth, with the number of deaths increasing by 95% between 2000 and 2021."^[4] In the United States, prevalence has risen from about one in eight in 2007,^[5] to one in seven in 2021.^[6]