Demystifying Kidney Disease for the Average Joe!

Toxins present in the environment are a common but under-appreciated cause of kidney disease and kidney failure. Environmental causes typically include chemical agents (eg. heavy metals), physical agents (eg. high temperature/heat, dehydration), and biological/infectious agents (eg. malaria, HIV etc). Here is an overview of some exposures and their sources that you should be aware of:

Certain types of CT scans will often require that the patient get intravenous (iv) "dye" or contrast to make the organs stand out and delineate them better. This usually would lead to better images with greater sensitivity that help the radiologist in picking up features that would otherwise get missed. The downside however is that this very contrast could sometimes cause damage to the kidneys. The medical term for this is " contrast induced nephropathy " (CIN). What do you then do in a situation where iv contrast is necessarily required? Lets try and understand a few nuances about contrast-mediated kidney damage, and what you can do about it?

THE FUTURE IS HERE.....WELL, ALMOST! It has been a while since researchers started working on developing prototypes of artificial kidneys that could literally be implanted in to a human suffering from kidney failure. Theoretically, this kind of artificial kidney would replace the functions of a normal human kidney. It would flush the blood of all metabolic toxins, maintain all body electrolytes in the narrow range necessary for all life processes, produce hormones like erythropoietin (that drives the bone marrow to produce red blood cells), activate vitamin D, regulate blood pressure, etc etc. Yes, these are all some of the functions that those miracles of nature sitting in your flanks, your kidneys, are doing right now.

Cysts, or abnormal pockets of fluid filled sacs, are a common finding on imaging studies like ultrasounds that are done on the kidney. I often see concerned patients in consultation about this finding. The question in that situation is...should you be worried if you discovered that you have cyst/s in your kidney? HOW COMMON ARE KIDNEY CYSTS? Cysts in the kidney are a pretty common occurrence. They tend to get more prevalent in the older age groups. For instance, 11.5% of individuals aged 50-70, and 22.1% of all individuals aged over 70 yrs will have at least one cyst in the kidney . However, the challenge is to identify whether it is a benign age related finding or something as serious as cancer (which can present as cysts). Cysts often will have no symptoms, and will usually be discovered incidentally as part of imaging of the kidneys for unrelated reasons.

The fact that a number of painkillers are available freely over-the-counter (OTC) often gives a lot of people a false sense of security about the safety of these medications. A statement that I here from some of my patients is, "it was available without a prescription, so I thought it wasn't too strong ". So very often, patients assume that if a medicine is not too potent, it probably does not have serious side effects either. Sadly, a medication's potency is not necessarily proportional to its side effect profile. HOW DO PAIN MEDICATIONS DAMAGE THE KIDNEYS: EFFECTS ON KIDNEY FUNCTION Pain medications can have different renal effects. These can range from reversible, short term reductions in kidney function due to a decrease in the blood supply to the kidneys (called Acute Renal Failure, or Acute Kidney Injury ), to a more chronic disease where the kidneys shrink in size, develop a rough and bumpy surface, and demonstrate tissue breakdown called "papi