Details on diagnostic usefulness of Estimated GFR

Details on diagnostic usefulness of Estimated GFR

The earliest test still being used to screen for kidney diseases are based on qualitative urine tests for micro, sugar and albumin and this test is used even today as the first line test for screening infection, DM and renal failure. Measurements of urea and creatinine in serum are the standard biochemical
tests to evaluate kidney diseases. The stepwise evaluation of kidney diseases are measurement of GFR, which involves the measurements of creatinine in serum and in a 24hr urine and Tubular function tests such as concentration and dilution tests. The procedure for measuring GFR is time
consuming and a timed and correctly collected urine is very important to avoid errors. The kidney research foundation, through a series of research has developed a simple and fairly accurate formula to calculate GFR using only serum creatinine value. In this research paper, we have measured BUN and creatinine in serum and eGFR was calculated using the established formula by National kidneyfoundations, USA for grading of CKD based on GFR values.

A total of 200 patients, comparing of both males and females in different age groups who attended the routine master health checkup served as population for this study. eGFR for each patient was calculated online using serum creatinine and age of the patient. Based on the eGFR values, CKD
grading was done for each group of patients. The BUN/Creatinine was then correlated to eGFR and good correlations ranging from < 0.01 to <0.0001was observed for all the groups of patients studied indicating that BUN/creatinine will serve as an index for evaluating eGFR. Among 200 patients screened for CKD grading, 40.5% patients were grouped as G1 (normal), and the remaining grades were: G2 14.5%, G3a 2.5 %, G3b 16 %, G4 8.0 % and G5 18.5 %. Hence it is
recommended that each patient for whom creatinine is investigated be screened for eGFR. The outcome of this research will help to classify the CKD status of the patients and to refer such
patients to nephrologists for proper diagnosis and to decide the treatment modalities by further laboratory diagnosis