LAHORE: Around 20,000 new patients of End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) are emerging each year in Pakistan which is alarming, says a nephrologist.

It is the last stage of chronic kidney disease. In most cases, kidney failure is caused by some other health problems that cause permanent damage to kidneys. “Of the 20,000 patients, about 45 to 50pc develop ESRD primarily due to diabetes,” said Dr Waqar Ahmed who shared his findings with Dawn on the World Kidney Day on Thursday.

According to him, high blood pressure and kidney stones make lives of poor patients miserable because this important specialty is being ignored in the country.

Nephrologist spells out possible causes

Dr Waqar, who heads the nephrology department at Lahore’s Shaikh Zayed Hospital, spoke about the disease’s impact or burden on Pakistani population. The hospital also set up a medical camp, where more than 400 patients were screened for various types of tests to know the status of their kidney functions.

An awareness walk was also arranged by the department. Shaikh Zayed Hospital chairman Prof Farid Ahmad Khan, Administrator Dr Akbar, Prof Waqar and many other senior faculty members attended the walk.

“It is estimated that worldwide every 10th person is having some sort of kidney problem and 100 persons per million population develop kidney failure (ESRD) each year. If we talk about Pakistan, having a population around 200 million, there are about 20 million kidney patients,” Dr Waqar said. He said according to initial estimate about 20,000 new patients suffering from ESRD emerge each year and the number can be many times more than that. “However, a lot of work is yet to be done to know how much is the total population of ESRD patients in Pakistan,” he said.

He said diabetes was the most common cause of ESRD worldwide. “At present, 6-7pc of our population is discovered diabetic each year and this number is increasing tremendously,” he said.

Prof Waqar said high blood pressure was the second most common cause of the ESRD. “According to an estimate 26pc of our adult population have high blood pressure and more alarming situation is that 58pc of these patients either don’t know about their blood pressure or inadequately treat it. Only 12.5pc people are getting proper medicines to control their blood pressure within recommended limits,” he lamented.

He said inflammation of kidney was the third most common cause of the kidney failure. “Most of the time it is idiopathic but sometimes it may occur as a consequences of simple throat or skin infection. Similarly, the stone diseases are also a common cause of kidney failure. Its prevalence is different in parts of our country,” he said.

“Once a patient develops the ESRD, there are two ways: lifelong dialysis and kidney transplantation,” he said. He said dialysis cost about Rs30,000 to 40,000 a month for lifetime. Moreover, the best option is to conduct dialysis thrice a week and each session is done for four hours but it can restore only 15pc of the normal kidney functions.

Apart from the toxins cleared by the dialysis, a patient also needs costly treatment for the anemia and renal bone diseases.

“Another potential risk for the dialysis patients in our country is hepatitis C & B,” Prof Waqar said.

Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2017