KONTAN.CO.ID – Jakarta. Everyone is at risk of developing kidney disease. Recognize the characteristics of kidney disease and how to prevent it so that the kidneys remain healthy into old age.
Reporting from the website of the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes), kidney disease is the 10th cause of death in Indonesia with more than 42,000 deaths per year. People need to be aware of this disease by taking prevention as early as possible and recognizing the characteristics of kidney disease.
Kidneys are organs that function to get rid of metabolic waste in the body. All processes in the body will be excreted through the liver and kidneys, disposal from the kidneys is channeled through the urine while disposal from the liver is through the anus.
The function of the kidneys in addition to producing urine is as a fluid balance, for example when the air temperature is cold, the body will urinate more often, but if the temperature is hot the body will feel lack of fluids.
Chairman of the Indonesian Nephrology Association (Pernefri) dr. Zulkhair Ali said that if the kidneys are not functioning, kidney failure will occur. He said the common kidney diseases experienced were kidney stones, kidney infection, kidney inflammation, kidney due to diabetes, kidney due to hypertension, kidney due to lupus, and kidney due to polycystic disease.
These diseases can reduce kidney function. Kidney function can be divided into two, namely acute kidney disorders and chronic kidney disease. Then in chronic kidney disease there is a phase called acute on chronic
“What is interesting is that in acute kidney disease, the patient’s symptoms look very severe but can recover completely. Meanwhile, with chronic kidney disease, the patient does not feel anything, there are no symptoms, but when it is severe, he finally has to have dialysis and cannot be cured,” he said at a virtual press conference for World Kidney Day in Jakarta, Thursday (17/3).
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Chronic kidney disease, he continued, is a global health problem because the prevalence of kidney failure is increasing day by day. Not only that, the disease is progressive and cannot be cured, the mortality rate is high, and it is expensive.
Therefore it is necessary to do prevention with early detection of patients with kidney disease. Prevention is ideally carried out from the normal phase, namely screening people who are not sick to find out whether there are risk factors for kidney disease or not.
If a risk factor has been found, then the next step should be to reduce the risk factor. Screening is also carried out on patients who are experiencing kidney disease.
“Then, if there is damage, we have to take treatment, either to treat the kidneys to delay or slow the progression of the kidney disease or treat existing comorbidities,” said Zulkhair.
However, if kidney failure occurs, kidney replacement therapy or kidney transplantation should be performed.
Causes and characteristics of kidney disease
As a preventive measure, early detection of kidney disease is needed by identifying the causes of kidney failure. The most common causes of kidney disease are hypertension, diabetes, and kidney inflammation.
Meanwhile, the symptoms or characteristics of chronic kidney disease include nausea, itching, shortness of breath, anemia, and hypertension. Unfortunately, the characteristics of kidney disease only appear after an advanced stage or at an advanced stage. In the early stages of the symptoms are not visible or not felt.
Therefore, the solution is to have regular check-ups, especially for risk factors for kidney disease, including those over 50 years of age, diabetics, people with hypertension, smokers, obesity, and a family history of kidney disease. “This inspection should be done every 1 year,” he said.
In terms of health facilities, the Coordinator of Substances for Prevention and Control of Heart and Blood Vessel Diseases, Ministry of Health Theresia Sandra Diah Ratih said the Indonesian Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin had appointed Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital (RSCM) as the coordinator for the development of a network of hospitals for kidney disease services.
“We have tried to create a network of hospitals for kidney disease services, and some hospitals are expected to be able to support regional hospitals to be able to better themselves,” said Theresia.
The government has provided services for early detection for the community at least once a year, both at the RT and RW levels. The service is in the form of Posyandu for productive age and the elderly.
“Early detection is at least once a year. The whole community is expected to be able to access these services, including treatment and counseling for risk factors for kidney disease,” he said.
Those are the characteristics and causes of kidney disease to watch out for. May our kidneys always be healthy.
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