Chronic Kidney Disease
CKD, or Chronic Kidney Disease, refers to the impairment a person suffers in his/her kidneys, which may result in their reduced function, as time progresses. Chronic Kidney Disease is used as a replacement for previously held terms, such as the Chronic Renal Failure and Chronic Renal Insufficiency by the paediatric nephrology specialists. These terms were formerly used to describe the reduction of renal functions, whether to a large extent or otherwise. However, the adoption of the name Chronic Kidney Disease came about because it described the progression of the organ's functional loss (Wong, Warady and Srivastava, 2015).
Chronic Kidney Disease can be detected through various symptoms, which are common to other diseases. However, they point to the disease in its formative stage. Some of these symptoms, which point to the onset of the disease are:
Constant tiredness and feeling ill
The loss of one's appetite
Experiencing nausea
The unexplained loss of weight
Regular headaches
Scratching and drying of the skin
In some people, the symptoms are detected when the disease has progressed and become very severe. These symptoms are as listed below:
The skin may become darker than is natural for the person or lighter
The person's skin may become sensitive and be bruised easily
Sleeping becomes difficult
The patient cannot focus easily
There is pain in the skeletal structure
The hands swell and experience...
This is because the symptoms that it presents are not specific to the disease, and thus, cannot point to it in a distinct way. However, for those who have been recently diagnosed with the disease, at whatever stage of the continuum, history and evaluation must be directed as the patients are followed up. In this way, the "implications of health" will be understood, especially at the level of the patient's kidney function. When the history of the patient is evaluated, emphasis should be on establishing a cause or what could have contributed to the development of the disease. There should also be an examination or establishment of the existence of hereditary factors (Arici, 2014). Sometimes, this examination of the disease may establish the existence of another disease whose presence has brought about the condition. Some of these underlying diseases could include: pericarditis and anaemia (Arora, 2015). When following up a patient, there are several things that must be checked on a regular basis, including how the person's appetite is progressing, their health, nutrition, any changes in weight and orthostatic changes through the measuring of the heart rate and blood pressure. Heart rate and blood pressure can be measured…
