Chronic Renal Failure

Chronic renal failure is a worldwide public health problem. Millions of Americans are affected by this disease each year. It is a common condition in which there is progressive loss of kidney functioning. The loss of function usually takes months or years to occur, sometime not appearing until kidney function is less than one-tenth of normal. The kidneys have the important job of filtering, wastes and excess fluids from your blood, which are then excreted in the urine (Huether, 2012). When the kidneys are no longer able to remove wastes and excess fluids from the body, the human’s body fills with toxins and becomes very sick needing hemodialysis or a kidney transplant to sustain life. Throughout this paper, the pathophysiology, sign/symptoms, and evidence based practice being used to diagnose and treat Chronic renal failure will be discussed. To fully understand the pathophysiology of chronic renal failure, the correct meaning of acute renal failure must be understood first. Acute renal failure is a sudden inability of the kidney to maintain it normal function. The causes are classified into three major types, prerenal, intarenal, and postrenal. Each type causes alterations in fluid and electrolyte balance, acid base balance and blood pressure control. Most of the time acute kidney problems can be reversible by treatment (Chawla, Amdur, Amodeo, Kimmel, & Palant, 2011). In contrast, chronic renal failure is a slower process, which causes an irreversible loss of kidney function. It can also take place after an episode of acute renal failure, depending on the extent of nephron loss. There are many causes of chronic renal failure but can be divided into three categories: 1) those that directly affect the kidney, 2) those that are cause by obstruction of the lower urinary tract, 3) those associated with systemic diseases. No matter the cause, the result of renal failure is destruction of the functional units of the kidneys. Chronic renal failure is divided