Managing and Treating Chronic Kidney Diseases

Managing and Treating Chronic Kidney Diseases

Treating Chronic Kidney Diseases, Chronic conditions have been defined as “health problems that require ongoing management over a period of years or decades” and have been labelled as the biggest challenge faced by the health sector in the 21st century (WHO, 2002:11). While the economic cost of managing them is high, Suhrcke, Fahey & McKee (2008) identify some strong economic arguments that may be made in support of the need for societies to invest in their (chronic diseases) management. They identify some primary benefits such as improved health (in terms of patient’s quantity and quality of life in years), long-term cost savings from complications that are prevented, and workplace productivity experienced by patients and their employers. Management of such conditions are no longer evaluated by the rates of survival alone but, also, by the quality of life experienced by patients as a result of the therapy (Bowling, 2005)

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Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is becoming a global pandemic (Mahon, 2006; Chen, Scott, Mattern, Mohini & Nissenson, 2006; Clements & Ashurst, 2006). The disease causes gradual decline in kidney function (Silvestri, 2002). It has been categorised into 5 stages according to the glomerular filtration rates (Johnson & Usherwood, 2005) and the progression through these stages is influenced by several processes, mostly lifestyle-related (Riegersperger & Sunder-Plassmann, 2007). Patients with stage 5 kidney disease (end stage) must receive kidney transplant, peritoneal dialysis or haemodialysis to survive (Niu & Li, 2005). However, Wu et al. (2004) identifies that many patients undergo either haemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis because kidneys are, mostly, not available for transplant. Between these two treatment methods, haemod