Does renal insufficiency mean uremia? Some people are confused about this
question. In clinic, chronic kidney disease can be divided into four stages. The
four stages are compensation stage of renal insufficiency, discompensation stage
of renal insufficiency, early stage of renal failure and advanced stage of renal
failure (uremia).
In the compensation stage of renal insufficiency, chronic kidney disease
patients can not feel any symptoms, and their creatinine level, GFR are all in
normal range because of the compensation ability of the kidney. As we know, one
important function of kidney is filtration. When some renal glomeruli are
damaged and fail to work, the other healthy renal glomeruli will do more work to
replace them. So creatinine( High Creatinine Levels ) and other toxins such as blood urea nitrogen, urea
acid can be cleaned out of the body. In this stage, chronic kidney disease
patients even do not have to limit the food which they take in. They do not have
to limit water and keep low salt for the discharge of water is also normal.
In the discompensation stage of renal insufficiency, other renal glomeruli
which do more work will also be tired and fail to work for a long time. In this
stage, level of serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen and urea acid may increase
a little and chronic kidney disease patients can have symptoms such as anemia,
fatigue, decreased body weight, and can not concentrate, and so on. These are
usually ignored. If suffering from loosing water, infection, bleeding and so on,
obvious symptoms will appear soon.
The third stage is early stage of renal failure. In this stage, renal
function declines seriously. Chronic kidney disease patients in this stage can
easily feel fatigue, weakness. Besides, anemia will become more obvious. Urine
at night will also increase. In addition, blood urea nitrogen and serum
creatinine also increase obviously. Acidosis can also be accompanied. So this
stage can also be called azotemia stage.
The last stage is advanced stage of renal insufficiency(uremia). In this
stage, chronic kidney disease patients have serious symptoms in clinic such as
severe nausea, vomiting, little urine, edema, high blood pressure (High Blood Pressure and Kidney Disease), serious
anemia, itch in skin, and so on.
So from the above, we can get a conclusion that renal insufficiency does not
always mean uremia. When it develops into advanced stage, we call it uremia. And
people are diagnosed with renal insufficiency, they had better receive treatment
as soon as possible so as to prevent it from worsening.