Kidney (renal) diseases are many and varied. What is commonly encountered in daily practice and what is feared by many patients is End Stage Renal Disease requiring dialysis. There are a lot of myths and half truths that I have encountered in my practice over the years. One of them is that “pou change ou du sang kan fer dialyse”, another one is that “dimoune mort kan fer dialyse” , yet another funny one is ” dimoune dire ki kan fer dialyse ki…” and so on…I shall dispel all these myths and half truths over the next posts.
The main complication of most kidney diseases is End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD), which is as the name suggests, the last stage of kidney failure, and the patient will now require dialysis. The main causes of ESRD are Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension which are quite prevalent in Mauritius. Almost half of the Mauritian population is diabetic, or pre diabetic and a quarter of the population is hypertensive. This leaves us all at high risk of chronic kidney failure or disease (CKD), a condition in which the kidneys are irreversibly and permanently damaged and eventually renal replacement therapy will be needed.
There are five stages of CKD and that is graded mainly as per kidney function. The last stage of which is ESRD, a situation where renal replacement therapies should be considered. The treatment of choice for ESRD is a kidney transplant. A healthy compatible donor must be found and if all tests are ok, a surgery is done whereby a healthy kidney from the donor is removed and transplanted in the recipient (the patient with ESRD). It is worth pointing out that most people are born with two kidneys and only one is needed as such to maintain life. Hence this enables us to donate one kidney.
However very often, a potential donor is not found in time and thus the patient is left with no choice but starting on dialysis. This will be elaborated in a further post.
Renal Association of Mauritius 