How Kidney Diseases Behave
The kidneys perform several vital functions. First, they remove metabolic waste products from the body. Second, they remove excess water from the body. In addition, the kidneys produce vitamin D and the hormone erythropoietin, which help maintain bone health and haemoglobin levels. The kidneys play a vital role in maintaining blood pressure and blood sugar levels. They also help regulate the body's acid-base balance.
So, when the kidney starts failing slowly, these functions will gradually worsen, and the patient will start to feel the effects of that.
Most kidney diseases develop very slowly and reach the final stage. This is because the kidneys compensate for the loss of function. They continue to compensate until the later stages, when symptoms finally appear. In this way, kidney diseases are often silent, and patients notice them only when blood tests are done for other non-kidney-related illnesses or during routine health check-ups. When kidney function declines slowly and reaches the final stage, there is very little chance of restoring it to normal levels. In such cases, renal replacement therapy, such as dialysis or renal transplantation, is the treatment option, suitable in appropriate circumstances.
Some kidney diseases develop very quickly, and treatment during the course of the disease may preserve kidney function and help patients survive. Timely diagnosis and treatment of these diseases save the kidneys from permanent damage.
To summarise, kidney diseases are silent in nature. Some have a short-term course and improve completely, while others are slow-growing and reach the final stage permanently, never reverting to normal.