Kidney disease - Nephrology

A Nephrologist is a kidney specialist, or more strictly a specialist in disorders of the urinary tract. Nephrologists themselves do not carry out surgery, instead they refer to surgical colleagues.

For this reason, cases involving kidney disease often arise as a result of failure to carry out an investigation or failure to interpret appropriate investigation or imaging.

Kidney dialysis or kidney transplantation are relatively new developments; years ago, terminal kidney failure invariably meant death. Thankfully there have been advances in this area, although there are still symptoms and conditions arising out of kidney failure that can be very important.

The symptoms of kidney failure can be complicated. Blood in the urine (haematuria) or other adverse findings on dipstick (urine) tests may lead to further investigations.

Conditions that can arise as a result of kidney failure include:

• acute renal failure
• nephrotic syndrome (in which large amounts of protein leak into the urine as a result of kidney damage)
• hypertension
• diabetic kidney disease
• obstruction of the urinary tract, either by tumour of the kidney or genitourinary tract