Have you ever heard of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)? If you haven’t, it’s time to gain some awareness of this condition which affects an estimated 10 percent of the United States adult population. That’s about 20 million people, and when you consider the potentially dire consequences of living with CKD, it becomes clear that this condition poses a major health threat.
Chronic Kidney Disease is a relatively simple condition in which a person’s kidneys are damaged or otherwise malfunctioning, and thus these kidneys can’t filter blood in the same way that healthy kidneys would. Because of this reduced filtration rate, people can suffer a number of medical complications down the line. If left unchecked and untreated, CKD can cause someone to endure an unhealthy life, with the ultimate risk being kidney failure, which would require a transplant or regular dialysis.
The big problem with CKD is that it is tough to identify for the patient. They may be completely unaware they are suffering from less-than-ideal kidney function, and a patient would need very specific blood and urine tests to confirm that they have CKD.
Your doctor or other medical staffers may not even know you have CKD. Gone unchecked and unnoticed, the condition will only progress, get worse and cause you other complications down the line — expensive complications that could have been avoided if, say, your doctor or other medical staffer failed to identify your CKD when some signs pointed to it.
Failure to diagnose a condition is one of the most egregious things that can happen in the world of medical malpractice. When you are affected by it, you should consider your legal options.
Source: CDC, “National Chronic Kidney Disease Fact Sheet, 2014,” Accessed Aug. 19, 2014
