LAHORE: The Pakistan Society of Nephrology (PSN) has established, what appears to be first of its kind, internet-based registries of various renal diseases to generate data on patients with kidney problems in the country.

The initiative is likely to be a big help in collection of a uniform data about the patients with kidney diseases to support the government to devise the best strategies to meet the challenges.

“With chronic kidney disease (CKD) burden increasing worldwide, the limited financial resources and lack of infrastructure in Pakistan put a severe strain on existing health policies,” says PSN president Prof Dr Waqar Ahmad.

The head of the nephrology department of Shaikh Zayed Hospital Lahore, Dr Waqar lamented that the exact prevalence of renal disease in Pakistan was not known since long due to the lack of adequate data recording systems both in the government and private sectors.

“The PSN recently established internet-based registries of various renal diseases to enable Pakistan to gather for the first time consolidated data on the disease in question,” he said while talking to Dawn ahead of the World Kidney Day.

According to the available estimated figures so far, he said, 100 people per million population develop the end-stage kidney disease (ESRD) each year and every 10th person is suffering from some kind of kidney problem.

“If the same figures are applied on total population of Pakistani, about 22,000 people each year would develop the ESRD, requiring dialysis or transplant,” Prof Waqar informed. These alarming statistics highlighted the importance of good and effective nephrological care in the country, he said and added that in western countries, diabetes and hypertension account for over 2/3rd of the cases of chronic kidney disease (CKD). In Pakistan, diabetes, hypertension urinary stones and glomerulonephritis (a group of diseases that injure the part of the kidney that filters blood) are the leading causes of CKD.

The World Kidney Day is celebrated every year on the second Thursday of March, bringing together millions of people in over 150 countries and uniting them to produce a powerful voice for kidney health awareness.

This year the topic of day is “Kidney and Women Health”. “Pregnancy results in important alterations in acid-base, electrolyte, and renal function due to pregnancy-associated physiologic changes in renal and systemic hemodynamics,” the PSN president said.

“A pregnant woman is at a high risk to develop kidney-related complications ranging from simple urinary tract infection to acute kidney injury (AKI). Obstetrical AKI is a rare entity in the developed world. In United States the incidence has decreased from 43pc (1956-1967) to 0.5pc with respect to total acute renal failure (ARF) cases (1988-1994) and no case of maternal death or irreversible renal damage has been observed in last seven years.”

However, Dr Waqar added, in the developing countries like Pakistan pregnancy related AKI ranged from 4pc to 36pc and mostly because of sepsis and blood loss during or after delivery. He said the data from Pakistan was scanty but various studies showed high incidence of mortality (18pc to 23pc) and morbidity (13pc to 26pc) related to obstetrical AKI.

“We have to go a long way until these ideal health standards are achieved as far as nephrology is concerned,” he said and hoped that the efforts launched under the PSN would open a new era by providing uniform data on the disease pattern and the number of patients with CKD to ease burden.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2018