Will Kidney Failure Kill Me

Kidneys are vital organs of human being and it mainly has the functions of filtering harmful wastes in the blood and producing urine as well as maintaining orders and balances of water, sodium and acid-base. Kidney failure means that part or all the renal functions have been lost. As a result, these metabolic wastes can not be discharged outside and they will accumulate in the body and cause many damages to the health.

Kidney failure can be divided into acute kidney failure and chronic one. Acute kidney failure is sharp fall of kidney filtration function due to various reasons and there will be a series of clinical manifestations such as increase of serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen (BUN), disorders and imbalances in the internal environment along with oliguria or anuria.

Chronic kidney failure is gradual decline and loss of renal functions due to long term chronic kidney disease or other systemic diseases. In some cases, acute kidney failure can lead to chronic kidney failure if not treated properly or timely.

Will kidney failure lead to death? Actually there is no definite answer and it depends on many factors. In the early stage of kidney failure and if the creatinine is not too high, patients can lead normal life with proper treatments and daily cares. So long as effective and timely treatments can reverse kidney damages and improve kidney functions patients can achieve clinical remission and extended life expectancy. However if the illness is left along to develop, it will progress into end stage renal disease and cause irreversible renal damages and many symptoms and complications which might be life-threatening.

When more than 90% nephrons are damaged and the glomerular filtration rate fall below 10-15ml/min, it is end stage chronic kidney disease and there will be failure of many organs and serious disorders of the metabolism. Patients need to rely on dialysis to replace renal functions to discharge wastes and toxins out of the body and maintain life activity. In this stage it is very dangerous because high potassium, cerebral edema pulmonary edema and heart failure are all the common cause of death. Therefore we can see that effective and proper treatments in the early stage are of great importance.