Facts About Kidney illnesses in india
- There are more than 2,000,000 patients with renal failure in the country.
- Every year, in India, there are 1,00,000 new patients with end-stage renal failure (ESRD) who require treatment.
- Of these patients alone, 9,00,000 patients will require dialysis, apart from the already existing patients.
- Only 2% of these patients can avail of dialysis treatment.
- Only 5% of these patients get transplanted.
- Less than 0.5% of these patients undergo peritoneal dialysis.
- The cost of dialysis per month could sometimes amount to the entire family income per month, or even more than that.
- 1 out of every 3 girls and 1 out of every 5 boys will have a urinary tract infection before the age of 11 years.
Causes of renal scarring in children:
- 10% of the cases are due to uremia.
- Upto 38% of the cases are due to hypertension.
- 13% of the cases are due to toxemia of pregnancy.
Renal scarring is the 4th leading cause of transplant in children.
30-40% of the cases of chronic kidney failure (requiring dialysis) are due to diabetes mellitus and 15% of the cases are due to hypertension.The global incidence of chronic kidney failure in children is five per million children (who are under the age of 12 years) per year.Kidney-related problems in a growing foetus can be picked up during a routine abdominal ultrasound of pregnant women. If a detailed follow-up is done throughout the intrauterine life of the affected baby, then soon after the birth, these defects can be corrected.
Infections of the kidney that occur early in life (that is, within 2 years), if left unidentified, and improperly investigated and treated, will lead to scarring and irreversible damage. The symptoms pertaining to kidney diseases in children could be in the form of a failure to thrive, vomiting, pallor (anaemia) and growth retardation. A high degree of suspicion is necessary to diagnose urinary tract infections and a renal problem in children.
Acute Kidney Failure: can occur following severe infection, severe diarrhoea and vomiting with dehydration, extensive burns, poisoning with toxic chemicals or drugs, or as an allergic reaction to certain medications. This is often a temporary situation. Here, timely treatment can often retrieve the kidneys to near normalcy.Chronic Kidney Failure: occurs due to an immunological disease affecting the kidney (chronic glumerulonephritis), diabetes mellitus, hypertension, genetic diseases affecting the kidney (polycystic disease), or a block to the urinary passage for a prolonged period of time.
Most of the kidney diseases in children are due to common treatable causes. The main advantage of a child’s kidney is that, as a growing kidney, it has the capacity to recover if timely treatment is administered. Whereas, an adult kidney in which the process of destruction had commenced in early childhood, but had gone undiagnosed, can succumb to irreversible damage.An adult kidney (either from a living or cadaver donor) can be transplanted to a child [who has suffered irreversible kidney damage due to end-stage renal failure (ESRD)].
A girl child who undergoes a kidney transplant can have a normal growth phase, including ‘menarche’ the onset of menstrual cycles.Children cannot be subjected to repeated dialysis. This is because, in children, the blood volume is naturally less. Therefore, haemodialysis is not a good preposition. Even technically, dialysis in children may pose difficulties, as the blood vessels in children are small.