Acute Kidney Failure - Know Its Causes!

You're said to suffer from the problem of acute kidney failure if your kidneys suddenly stop working and lose their ability to eliminate waste materials including excess fluids and salts from the blood. The condition usually develops quickly over a few days or even a few hours. When this happens, waste materials accumulate in your blood, disrupting the chemical balance of your bloodstream.

So, what causes this problem?

Acute kidney failure can occur because of any one of these reasons:

1. A drop or slowdown of blood flow to the kidneys - Adequate blood circulation to the kidneys is of great importance as without it the kidneys may end malfunctioning. If blood flow to the kidney is hampered, a part of or the entire kidney may die. You may suffer from acute kidney failure if blood flow to the kidneys gets impaired due to conditions like

• Heavy blood loss
• Sepsis (body's inflammatory reaction to an infection, which can bring about organ failure, tissue damage, and death)
• Injury
• Use of certain drugs
• Dehydration
• Burns
• Heart disease

2. Urinary obstructions - A sudden blockage that hampers your kidney's ability to eliminate urine can also bring about acute kidney failure. When this happens, it leads to a build up of toxins in the body, causing an overload of the kidneys. Conditions that bring about this urinary obstruction include:

• Cervical cancer
• Colon cancer
• Bladder cancer
• Kidney stones
• Enlarged prostate
• Prostate cancer

3. Disease within the kidneys - Even instances of clotting within the blood vessels of the kidneys can lead to acute kidney failure. This is because if the movement of blood cells within the blood vessels gets hampered, kidneys are not able to filter out toxins from the body. The conditions and diseases that may cause clotting, and subsequently damage to the kidneys include:

• Scleroderma (an autoimmune disease that affects connective tissues and skin)
• Build-up of cholesterol deposits
• Glomerulonephritis (an inflammatory condition of the kidney's ball-shaped structures called glomeruli)
• Hemolytic uremic syndrome (a condition that occurs due to untimely death of red blood cells)
• Lupus (a disorder of the body's immune system that brings about damage to the body's own organs and tissues)