Racing Against Time: The Importance of Early Detection of Kidney Disease in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes - Episode 1
Overview of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and Impact on Patients
Dhiren Patel, PharmD, and Robert Busch, MD, present an overview of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and how it may impact a patient.
Transcript
Dhiren Patel, PharmD: Welcome to this patient care online presentation titled “Racing Against Time: The Importance of Early Detection of Kidney Disease in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes.” My name is Dhiren Patel. I’m a clinical pharmacist and an adjunct associate professor of pharmacy practice at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston.
Robert Busch, MD: Hi, my name is Dr Bob Bush. I’m director of clinical research at the Community Endocrine Group in Albany Med Faculty Practice in Albany, New York.
Dhiren Patel, PharmD: Our discussion today will focus on the underdiagnosis of kidney disease. We’ll explore new treatment options for patients with diabetic kidney disease, as well as new tests. Thank you so much again, Dr Busch, for joining me today. I want to start off and talk a little bit about your insights and what you’ve seen over the years in terms of the prevalence of chronic kidney disease [CKD] in your patient population, and maybe talk a little bit about an overview of its impact that you’ve seen.
Robert Busch, MD: CKD is divided into 5 stages; the stage that we endocrinologists seeing are stage I, II, and III. Usually stage IV [cases], where the GFR [glomerular filtration rate] is below 30, we refer those to nephrology, and we might comanage [those cases]. But the whole idea is to head off chronic kidney disease. We’ll head off the high-speed train to dialysis. You’d like to stabilize things with the kidneys and detect it early on. We see a fair amount of patients. We do urine microalbumins and glomerular filtration rate in every patient, and we do that routinely. And surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, [we may find] that they have early kidney disease based on a urine microalbumin, even though their GFR is fine. GFR is a sign of kidney function, whereas urine microalbumin is a sign of kidney damage. A lot of people have early kidney damage, but their function still is OK, and that’s someone you should be alert to do what you can to prevent kidney disease.
Transcript was AI-generated and edited for clarity.
