Childhood Acute Glomerulonephritis: Symptoms and Complications

Acute Glomerulonephritis can be seen at any age among children, but its morbidity is higher between age 3~8. Read on and find the following symptoms and  complications.

Symptoms of Childhood Acute Glomerulonephrtis

High blood pressure

Blood pressure elevates mildly or moderately, which is mainly attributable to retention of fluid. With the increasing in urine output volume, the blood pressure will recover normal gradually.

Oliguria

Initially, the urine output declines. 2 weeks later, with the recovery of renal function, the urine output will recover normal gradually. In some cases, the children may suffer from anuria.

Hematuria

In 30~40% cases, the patients develop gross hematuria which can last for 1~2 weeks and then transform into microscopic hematuria. Severely, it is complicated  with difficult urination.

Edema

In more than 80% cases, the patients experience edema, generally on eyelids and faces. In severe case, the fluid may collect in every part of the body only within in 2~3 days.

Complications of Acute Glomerulonephritis in children

Encephalopathy

Once it occurs, the children usually experience serious headache, vomiting, obnubilation, coma.

Heart failure

Heart failure is occasionally seen in children and it is more common among adults. It is attributed to collection of fluid and high blood pressure. Usually, heart failure develops along with enlargement of liver and pulmonary edema.
Once your children have the similar symptoms above, you had better have him/her inspected at once. In Acute Glomerulonephritis, early and effective intervention treatment can reverse renal function completely.

How to Treat Anemia in Chronic Renal Failure

Anemia is a condition in which the red blood cells are short to keep the body functioning well. It usually happens in kidney disease patients for kidneys are important to participate in the generation of red blood cells.

Why does anemia occur in Chronic Renal Failure?

Healthy kidneys can produce a hormone called erythropoietin(EPO), which can stimulate bone marrow to produce red blood cells. However, in Chronic Renal Failure, the impaired kidneys can not make enough EPO. As a result, the bone marrow can not produce enough red blood cells to meet the body's need.
In addition, the patients often suffer from nausea, vomiting and other digestive tract disease so they may not get sufficient iron and folic acid from food. These nutrients from food help the young red blood cells make hemoglobin, their main oxygen-carrying protein. Also, if the patients are on dialysis, they may lose blood during dialysis.
Anemia tends to worsen disease progresses so it is very necessary for the patients to control it by effective treatment.

How to treat anemia in Chronic Renal Failure?

Restore the impaired kidneys
As mentioned above, anemia in Chronic Renal Failure results from the impaired kidneys and inadequate renal function. Therefore, the treatment should primarily focus on restoring the impaired kidneys. Once the kidney structure is rebuilt and kidney tissues are regenerated, the kidneys will have an improvement in renal function and even recover normal function.
Iron
Iron is also needed to raise hematocrit to a normal level. If iron level is too low in blood, EPO will not help in relieving anemia. Usually,the patients are recommended to take iron pills or take intravenous injection of iron.
In addition, a few people may need vitamin B12 and floic acid supplements.
EPO
EPO is commonly used to treat anemia in Chronic Renal Failure. It is usually injected under the skin two or three times a week. FDA recommended that the patients treated with EPO should keep the hemoglobin level between 10 and 12 g/dl.
Anemia is knowns as “having 1.000 faces”. Without seeing your condition, it is hardly to give further personalized suggestions. But if you are interested, you can leave your conditions and question to kidneyask@hotmail.com

Difficulty Breathing and Chronic Kidney Failure

Many doctors say that its symptoms is terrible than Chronic Kidney Failure itself. Difficult breathing is a good example. Many kidney failure patients die of difficult breathing before their kidneys are totally damaged.
Why people with Chronic Renal Failure suffer from difficulty in breathing?
1. Once the kidneys are damaged, they will not be able to discharge fluid out of body normally as before. As a result, the fluid will build up in body and the increased blood volume will also collect in lungs thus making it difficult to breath.
2. As the kidneys can not filter out the potassium, the potassium level in blood will rise up. As a result, it will cause heart to beat irregularly and the patients are at high risk of developing congestive heart failure. Afterwards, heart failure can lead to difficulty in breathing.
3. Anemia is commonly seen in the patients with Chronic Renal Failure. Red blood cells are responsible for carrying oxgen to tissues and organs. For anemia, the number of red blood cells will decline thus resulting in difficulty in breathing.
The above are the main causes of difficult breathing for the patients with Chronic Renal Failure.
How to deal with it?
The patients should take some measures to relieve lung edema, heart failure and anemia by using diuretic and hemopoietin etc. However, these measures only can relieve the symptoms, but not their root causes.
The above problems are mainly attributable to renal function decline. Therefore, the primary goal in eliminating the difficulty in breathing is to restore the impaired kidneys.
Difficult is the indication of damaged heart that caused by the underlying kidney problems. Thereby, management for both heart and kidneys is important.

Living With Chronic Kidney Disease

Once you are diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease, how to live with it and how to keep it silent in your life will be a necessary question that needs you to answer. Read on and find the suggestions of living with chronic kidney disease.
First things first, what is chronic kidney disease? Allow me to introduce it for you once again.
Kidneys function as a filtering system in human body. Normal kidneys are able to remove the excess fluids and electrolytes as well as wastes from your blood. However, as your kidneys are damaged, there’s no way to eliminate all those toxins, resulting in wastes accumulating in your body. It can be fatal and need some serious attention.
Since you have developed chronic kidney disease, what should you do to stop it from worsening? Chronic kidney disease is not dreadful as long as you take good control of the disease, but how?
▪ To those who have diabetes, your blood sugar should be managed.
▪ To those with high blood pressure, take good control of your blood pressure.
▪ Control the cholesterol
▪ Live a healthy lifestyle, stay away from alcohol and cigarettes.
▪ Follow a sound diet, which greatly benefits your kidneys.
▪ Avoiding renal toxic drugs can prevent the condition from getting worse.
▪ Taking regular check-ups
Third question, when will I have to take dialysis?
You can cross off the dialysis from your list as long as you are able to take a good control of your condition. Early detection, timely treatment and healthy lifestyle do deliver you a best prognosis.
There’s a good prognosis of chronic kidney disease, but need your precautions. Don’t learn the disease only in the end stage, because as the condition enters into ESRF (end-stage renal failure), dialysis or kidney transplant would be inevitable. Need more information, write an email to kidneyask@hotmail.com
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Treatments to Fight Against Your Renal Failure

The supportive therapy in first stage mainly focuses on preventing primary kidney disease together with adopting conservative medical therapies, with the purpose of preserving remaining nephrons as much as possible, so as to delay the arrival of Renal Failure. Here are several principles:

1. Follow a healthy diet plan. Primary principles for people with Rena Failure are low protein, low salt, low potassium and low phosphorus. All those restrictions should be followed without slackness. Keep this in your mind: to people who develop kidney disease; diet contributes to reduce kidneys’ burden with an obvious effect. Stop posing heavy burden to your kidneys, start from your daily diet now.

2. Take good control of your blood pressure. This principle is especially suitable for those with high blood pressure. Blood pressure has a complex relationship with kidneys. Anyway, taking good control of your blood pressure benefits one’s kidney health and cardiovascular system.

3. Do something to correct the anemia. A long-term anemia imposes the burden of heart, triggers a series of heart diseases.

4. Correct the acidosis. Acidosis develops as reduced kidney function aggravates. A standing acidosis will consume muscles, trigger bones loss, and increase the risk of bone disease.

5. Manage hyperlipidemia. More and more people consider hyperlipidemia as one of the main culprits of kidney disease, of course, including Renal Failure. Hyperlipidemia may elevate glomerular internal pressure; stimulate hyperlipidemia of interstitial cells and hyle. Consequently, causing chronic glomerular injury.
I just list some conventional as well effective ways to deal with Renal Failure, there can be more.

Chronic Renal Failure and Difficulty in Breathing

Why people with Chronic Renal Failure suffer from difficulty in breathing?
1. Once the kidneys are damaged, they will not be able to discharge fluid out of body normally as before. As a result, the fluid will build up in body and the increased blood volume will also collect in lungs thus making it difficult to breath.
2. As the kidneys can not filter out the potassium, the potassium level in blood will rise up. As a result, it will cause heart to beat irregularly and the patients are at high risk of developing congestive heart failure. Afterwards, heart failure can lead to difficulty in breathing.
3. Anemia is commonly seen in the patients with Chronic Renal Failure. Red blood cells are responsible for carrying oxgen to tissues and organs. For anemia, the number of red blood cells will decline thus resulting in difficulty in breathing.
The above are the main causes of difficult breathing for the patients with Chronic Renal Failure.

How to deal with it?

The patients should take some measures to relieve lung edema, heart failure and anemia by using diuretic and hemopoietin etc. However, these measures only can relieve the symptoms, but not their root causes.
The above problems are mainly attributable to renal function decline. Therefore, the primary goal in eliminating the difficulty in breathing is to restore the impaired kidneys.

Smoking and the Risk of Renal Failure

Patients with high blood pressure (I mean primary high blood pressure) have no protein in urine when they have no kidney damages. However, if people with high blood pressure smoking, proteinuria may occur frequently. The fact indicates that smoking impairs filtration function of kidneys. Although there are plenty of other factors damaging one’s kidneys, smoking is liable for most of the kidney damages.
According to the September 2011 Issue of Renal and Urology News, among those individuals who are younger than 70 years old, those current smoker along with former smoker are at 3.3 and 4.0 times high risk for developing Renal Failure compared with those who never smoked before. Scary isn’t it?
Even those who have already quit smoking are still at a high risk of Renal Failure than those who never smoked. Good news is that the risk of Renal Failure will diminish with time since one quit smoking.
"The findings came to light from a study of 65,589 individuals who participated in the HUNT II study, a Norwegian general health survey. During a median follow-up of 10.3 years, 124 subjects progressed to stage 5 chronic kidney disease.", quote from the report.
As is well-known, smoking is extremely harmful to one’s health, whereas it has become a popular trend especially among men. People with CKD should now be strongly encouraged to quit smoking. After reading the article if you are still smoking, I do suggest you to take a second thought. Smoking has no good to your healthy, whatever you are healthy or have already developed Renal Failure, you should definitely stay away from it.