How to Diagnose Polycystic Kidney Disease

Before making a Polycystic Kidney Disease diagnosis, doctors usually ask a number of questions like what are your present symptoms and Do you have PKD history. Also, patients are asked to perform a physical exam and some kidney related tests, including ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computerized teomography scan (CT scan) and genetic testing.

Polycystic Kidney Disease symptoms help doctors have a general diagnosis about this disease. PKD brings them different symptoms in different stage, so by learning their symptoms, doctors will have a general knowledge about their present illness condition.

Diagnosing Polycystic Kidney Disease through its symptoms

In general, PKD patients suffer no symptoms at the very beginning. PKD is a hereditary disease, which means most of the patients are born with PKD gene. PKD gene lies in 16th chromosome of renal tubular epithelial cell. Before cysts in PKD appear and damage renal tissues, sufferers usually feel nothing different and they can live as freely as they like. In such a case, there may have no kidney damages or just mild kidney damages.

As more and more cysts appear in kidney, PKD patients will suffer various symptoms like back pain, blood urine, foamy urine, high blood pressure, kidney growth and anemia and so on. Occurrence of these symptoms alway indicates serious kidney damages.

Similar with many other kidney related diseases like Diabetic Nephropathy, IgA Nephropathy and Hypertensive Nephropathy, Polycystic Kidney Disease will also certainly develop to kidney failure that need to be treated with dialysis or kidney transplant. To avoid such a bad consequence, stopping cysts from enlarging is the key point.

Although Polycystic Kidney Disease symptoms help to learn about illness condition, accurate diagnosis of PKD needs to be on the absis of medical tests.

Medical tests to diagnose Polycystic Kidney Disease

Ultrasound: As the first choice for diagnosing Polycystic Kidney Disease, ultrasound works by passing sound waves through the body to create a picture of the kidney and cysts in kidney. Also, it can detect cysts in the kidneys of a fetus.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): Similar with ultrasound, Magnetic resonance imaging also can be used to detect cysts in kidney. But, it is less commonly used in diagnosing Polycystic Kidney Disease compared with ultrasound.

Computerized Teomography Scan (CT scan): CT scan allows doctors to see cross-sectional images of kidneys, so it is also a very important test for diagnosing Polycytic Kidney Disease.

Genetic Test: Different from the above tests, genetic test is more advanced with the ability that detecting the presence of the autosomal dominant PKD mutations before cysts develop. An individual who knows of a PKD gene mutation may be able to prevent this disease by regulating diet and blood pressure control.

General diagnosis about Polycystic Kidney Disease makes us have a general understanding about our illness condition, but accurate diagnosis allows us to take corresponding measures to fight Polycystic Kidney Disease. Therefore, from this perspective, accurate diagnosis about Polycystic Kidney Disease is more beneficial.