Healthcare at West Virginia University

On February 16, 2005, CKD Awareness Day, Governor Manchin introduced his proclamation by noting that kidney disease touches all of us. The truth in this statement and the "close community" of West Virginia underscores the state's opportunity for enhancing awareness and targeting those at risk to improve outcomes for patients with kidney disease. Over the next year, free screenings for kidney disease will be held throughout the state.

The KEEP Your Kidneys Program is a systematic approach to improving recognition and diagnosis of CKD in West Virginia. Screening for kidney disease is simple and inexpensive and starts with identification of individuals at risk. Measurement of blood pressure, a urine test for protein, and a blood test can offer key information about the presence of kidney disease.

Kidney disease can happen to anyone and can affect people of all ages. Because the symptoms of kidney disease are often silent, many people have no symptoms and the disease goes unrecognized until it is too late.

Knowing one's creatinine level is the first step for those at risk for kidney disease. The silence of kidney disease can be interrupted with this simple blood test and other conditions which typically complicate CKD can be recognized early and treated.

Risk factors for chronic kidney disease include history of diabetes mellitus, high blood pressure, age greater than 65 years, and a family history of kidney disease.

• It is estimated that as many as 1 in 4 West Virginians have kidney disease - 50,000 with moderate to severe kidney insufficiency and 400,000 with mild kidney insufficiency. A significant proportion of these patients - between 30-50% - are diabetic.
• In 2003, 608 West Virginians with CKD advanced to end stage kidney failure needing dialysis; 54% of these new dialysis patients were over age 65, and 51% were diabetic. In 2003, 49% of the 1576 dialysis patients living in West Virginia were over age 65 and 48% were diabetic.
• Kidney disease is now recognized as a major risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease. Most striking is the observation that patients with even moderate reductions in kidney function are more likely to die than live long enough to reach the end stage of kidney failure.
• If kidney disease is diagnosed early, the complications of kidney failure, specifically cardiovascular disease, may be prevented. In addition, early diagnosis allows the use of treatments known to slow the rate of progression of kidney disease which may reduce the number of people whose kidney disease advances to end stage and the need for dialysis.

Click here to view the KEEP Schedule