How to recognize chronic glomerulonephritis?

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Chronic glomerulonephritis is a disease with damage to the glomeruli that progresses over many years leading to chronic kidney failure, with the risk of kidney failure complications causing bad consequences for the patient.

1. What is chronic glomerulonephritis?

The disease includes conditions of proliferation, edema, exudation and necrosis of hyaline, partial or total fibrosis of the glomeruli. The disease progresses chronically over many years leading to atrophic fibrosis in both kidneys. The disease can progress in stages, after 10-15 years, irreversible chronic kidney failure will appear.
Chronic glomerulonephritis is a quite dangerous disease, with this disease, kidney function will be reduced, gradually losing the ability to remove toxic substances from the body and eliminate excess fluids from the body. and causes serious complications such as:
Acute kidney failure causes loss of kidney filtering function, rapid accumulation of toxic substances, in some cases patients need urgent dialysis. Chronic kidney failure is a life-threatening complication of the patient, when kidney function is completely lost, hemodialysis or kidney transplant is required at a very high cost if you want to maintain life. High blood pressure is caused by the accumulation of waste products in the blood. Nephrotic syndrome

2. Recognizing signs of chronic glomerulonephritis

When acute glomerulonephritis occurs for more than 3 months and does not go away due to untreated or inadequately treated, intermittently, it will move to the chronic stage of glomerulonephritis. Symptoms depend on the degree of kidney failure or may not be kidney failure.
The function of the kidneys begins to gradually decline, so the symptoms of the disease are very diverse, sometimes due to the accidental urine test during the medical examination for some reason, and the protein and pink color are found. glomerulonephritis, other symptoms are very subtle and do not appear. Most cases of chronic glomerulonephritis have pale, itchy, and edematous skin and mucous membranes.
Edema is the most typical symptom of chronic glomerulonephritis. In the early stages of the disease, there may be discreet swelling, which has not yet affected health, so the patient can still work, work, eat, sleep and live normally, even without knowing he has edema. If the disease begins to worsen, the edema will be very obvious such as facial edema, under the skin around the ankle before the tibia, the sacrum, under the scalp that even the patient can feel and see. Characterized by soft, concave edema on a hard base such as the ankle. In severe disease, edema may present in the form of neck, pleural effusion, or hydrocele. The majority of cases are poor appetite due to anorexia, muscle pain, bone pain, nausea or vomiting (uremia).

Urinary incontinence, the amount of urine varies from patient to patient and stage of disease. The more advanced the chronic glomerulonephritis, the more obvious the oliguria. Hypertension: At the stage when there is no renal failure or mild renal failure, the proportion of patients with hypertension is low. But when kidney failure stage III, IV, the rate of patients with hypertension is over 80%. Anemia: When there is no kidney failure, there is no anemia or only mild anemia. But when there is kidney failure, anemia appears and gets worse, sometimes closely related to stages of renal failure. Symptoms showing high urea syndrome: At the stage when there is kidney failure such as vomiting, digestive disorders, bleeding, cardiovascular and neurological manifestations, acidosis causing deep breathing, breathing disturbances and severe especially coma due to high blood urea. As the disease progresses slowly, symptoms may include weight loss, vomiting and nausea, fatigue, headache, itching, frequent urination at night, or muscle twitching, cramps, or nosebleeds. . Proteinuria, when proteinuria is more than 3.5g/24 hours, there is accompanying nephrotic syndrome. But when renal failure is severe, proteinuria is usually less than 1g/24 hours. Hematuria, microscopic hematuria, rarely gross hematuria. If there is recurrent gross hematuria, it is usually a manifestation of IgA glomerular disease. Urinary casts include erythrocytes, granulomatous casts but not always present casts. Urea, creatinine, blood uric acid increased, glomerular filtration rate decreased when there was kidney failure. Blood K+ is usually elevated in the presence of renal failure. Blood Ca ++ decreased in renal failure stage II onwards. Blood Na+ is often reduced due to edema and a bland diet. Red blood cells and hemoglobin decrease in renal failure. When the ultrasound showed normal kidney size when there was no kidney failure, the kidneys were atrophied on both sides when there was kidney failure. X-ray shows the ball of the kidney atrophy, both on both sides when the kidney is in the stage of renal failure. Diagnosis of the disease is confirmed based on the symptoms of edema, recurrent episodes, oligouria, hypertension, anemia, proteinuria, red blood cells, granulocytes, erythrocytes, urea, elevated blood creatinine, and platelet filtration rate. kidney decreased. Ultrasound, X-ray of the kidneys on both sides, the kidneys are atrophied evenly.

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