"Diabetes" is one of the more high-incidence chronic diseases in the mainland, and it is collectively known as "three highs" with hypertension and hyperlipidemia. Diabetes is more frightening than the latter two because it doesn't just cause metabolic disorders, it can damage multiple systems and organs throughout the body, inducing different complications.
So far, more than 100 diabetes-related complications have been clinically identified, one of the most important comorbidities of which is kidney disease!
Diabetic nephropathy in a broad sense mainly includes two kinds of infectious and vascular lesions, the most common of which is vascular lesions, especially microangiopathy.
The so-called microvascular lesions refer to glomerular sclerosis, which is divided into three categories: nodules, exudation, and diffuse. Since nodular glomerulosclerosis is the most high incidence, the clinical so-called diabetic nephropathy generally refers to glomerular sclerosis.
Relevant surveys have shown that the incidence of diabetic nephropathy in mainland China has shown a significant upward trend, which is the second largest factor causing end-stage renal disease, second only to various primary glomerulonephritis. And because there are extremely complex metabolic disorders in the body of sugar friends, once they develop to the stage of kidney failure, they are often more difficult than other kidney disease treatments.
In particular, after concomitant nephrotic syndrome, patients may develop renal failure within 4 years, and few people survive for more than 5 years. Nearly 10% of people who die of diabetes in mainland China are related to kidney disease.
Since so far, there is no more effective way to prevent the emergence and development of diabetic kidneys in the clinic, so the clinic emphasizes that patients with diabetic kidneys need early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment. Because there are no typical manifestations in the early stage of diabetic nephropathy, there will be symptoms such as proteinuria and renal function changes after developing to a certain extent, so regular screening is necessary.
So the question is, how often do diabetics screen for kidney function in order to be safe?
How often diabetic patients are screened for renal function needs to be analyzed in combination with the actual age of the patient, the type of diabetes, and the severity of the disease.
Usually, if you are a diabetic patient with normal renal function and stable blood glucose control, you only need to screen for kidney function once every six months or every year on average, because the development of kidney disease is not sudden, it is a chronic process, according to this screening frequency, generally do not miss the best time for diagnosis;
However, if the patient has developed renal insufficiency before diabetes, or if diabetes has been combined with glomerulosclerosis not long after diabetes, in this case, it is necessary to appropriately increase the number and frequency of renal function tests.
It should be emphasized here that the development of diabetic nephropathy is not only related to blood sugar control, but also hypertension and hyperlipidemia will also accelerate the development of nephropathy, which are also the most common complications of diabetes.
Therefore, patients should not only monitor blood glucose and screen for kidney function, but also test blood pressure and blood lipids. Once hypertension and hyperlipidemia are diagnosed, patients also need to control them with medication to prevent them from continuing to develop and damage the kidney blood vessels.
Finally, we should remind everyone that diabetic nephropathy is a complication based on poor blood sugar control, no matter what type of diabetic patients, how blood glucose control is directly related to the emergence and development of kidney disease.
Good blood sugar control can reduce the risk of diabetic kidneys by 1/2 in patients with type 1 diabetes and about 1/3 in patients with type 2 diabetes. Therefore, no matter what the situation, the patient needs to control blood sugar.