Kidney Disease

I’m Dr  Ashok Sarin, a senior consultant nephrologist at Apollo Hospital New Delhi. I trained in Kidney Diseases at the Belfast City and Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, UK, which is in Northern Ireland. And besides having an MBA I’m also FRCP, Edenborough, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edenborough.

We see a lot of kidney diseases today, and people are very aware. But they get very worried as to what is happening, and there is going to be kidney failure, or kidney damage, and we are going to go on dialysis and transplant. And I want to say here, that there is a lot of prevention we can do so that we do not develop serious kidney diseases. Now the most important is that we must have a good, proper lifestyle. Like,

• We should not be obese.
• We should not have a diet which is rich in saturated fats or very rich in carbohydrate.
• We should maintain our weight, we should maintain our BMI at about 30, and we should also indulge in regular exercise.

This will keep us in a healthy situation and we will not develop serious diseases like diabetes and hypertension. But once we develop diabetes and hypertension, then we must take our treatment for diabetes very regularly, and keep our HPE1C at 6 percent, a fasting sugar of 100 milligrams percent. We should also control our hypertension, and make sure that our blood pressure is 120 by 80 millimetres of mercury. Then we should avoid smoking. As I said we should indulge in exercise.

And there are other conditions which can also cause kidney damage, which is kidney stones, urine tract infection.

So if we treat our kidney stones adequately, and avoid urinary tract infection from developing, or we treat it properly, then we are unlikely to have kidney damage, and that is how we prevent kidney disease. As I said, smoking is a complete no-no, and we should not indulge socially sometimes, but over indulgence of alcohol is forbidden. And when I said that regular medical checkups, say once a year, we will come to know if there is any indication of kidney disease, and if that happens, then we can take prompt action. For example, somebody is excreting a lot of protein, then remedial actions or further tests can be done. And kidney disease, if detected early, we have a wide range of medication at the moment, it can be treated very promptly. And we do not have to go into the stage where we say kidney failure or kidney damage, or dialysis or transplant. Now this is avoidable to a great extent. I will not say completely, but to a great extent it is possible, and that is why I am emphasizing over and over again, that this can be prevented. If we are very aware of kidney disease, and we make sure that we don’t develop kidney diseases at all.

Thank you, and in case you want to consult me, you could get in touch with Lybrate

. Thank you very much indeed.