Nephrotic syndrome is more common in autumn. How long can patients with uremia live? Doctors: Definitely longer than you think

In the blink of an eye, the midsummer has passed and the cool autumn has arrived. The temperature difference between morning and evening is getting bigger and bigger, and the number of patients with nephritis caused by upper respiratory tract infection is increasing. Many people do not pay attention to it, and take some cold medicine casually and no longer pay attention to it. Then comes nephrotic syndrome. If it is not taken seriously, it is often delayed until uremia occurs before going to the hospital.

Many kidney patients are afraid of uremia and even regard it as cancer. In fact, there is no need to worry. Uremia is not cancer and can be treated.

What is uremia?

Strictly speaking, uremia is not a disease, but a syndrome of a group of diseases, and is also the terminal stage of various kidney diseases. In my country, there are more than 100 million patients with chronic kidney disease, and only about 1 million patients eventually develop uremia. Therefore, once kidney disease is discovered, active intervention must be taken to prevent the disease from developing into the uremia stage, when treatment is relatively complicated.

Serum creatinine is commonly used to diagnose uremia. When it exceeds 707 micromoles per liter, it can be considered to have entered the uremia stage. However, since some people's creatinine is not so sensitive, we prefer to use creatinine clearance rate to determine whether the patient has entered uremia clinically. When it is <10ml/min, it is also considered to have entered the uremia stage. In addition to these two indicators, patients who have entered uremia are often accompanied by water, electrolyte, and acid-base metabolism disorders.

How to treat uremia? There is a broad consensus on the treatment of uremia patients, which is basically hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and kidney transplantation.

●Hemodialysis: Since the human kidneys are not working, we use machines to replace our kidneys. The dialysis machine is equivalent to the human kidneys. The patient's blood is led out of the body through the blood vessels and introduced into the dialysis machine. The dialysis machine exchanges substances, filters out the "waste" in the blood, and then returns the purified blood to the body, thereby achieving the purpose of excreting waste and correcting electrolyte and acid-base imbalances.

●Peritoneal dialysis: A dialysis tube is placed in the abdominal cavity, and the "peritoneal dialysis fluid" is poured into the abdominal cavity through the dialysis tube. Because of the presence of the "peritoneal dialysis fluid", metabolic waste and excess water in the human body will penetrate into the peritoneal dialysis fluid. Then the peritoneal dialysis fluid containing waste and excess water is released. Repeating this process several times, the waste and water in the human body will be excreted from the body.

● Kidney transplantation: Generally speaking, kidney transplantation is the most ideal treatment for chronic renal insufficiency. As long as the replaced kidney can work normally, hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis is no longer required. Of course, long-term oral anti-rejection drugs are required after surgery. However, due to the high price of kidney transplantation and the increasing scarcity of kidney sources, only a few people choose kidney transplantation for treatment.

How long can a person with uremia live? In the past, being diagnosed with uremia basically meant the end of the world. However, with the widespread promotion and application of dialysis treatment, especially after the country included it in the medical insurance coverage, the life span of uremia patients has been greatly extended. The patient with the longest dialysis time in the world is named Pierre, who started dialysis at the age of 11 and has been on dialysis for 50 years.

As long as they receive treatment early and regularly and pay attention to a regular lifestyle, there will be no problem for patients with uremia to survive for decades.

In the past, dialysis was expensive and many people with ordinary incomes could not afford it. The country has made great efforts to include dialysis in medical insurance, especially for low-income households, with a minimum dialysis fee of 4 yuan per session, which has greatly alleviated the treatment pressure on patients with uremia.

Today, I consulted our hospital's dialysis policy: one dialysis is 20 yuan for employee medical insurance, 100 yuan for ordinary urban residents, and 4 yuan for low-income households. Compared with other chronic diseases, this is already very cheap. And as time goes by, there will definitely be better and cheaper treatments developed, so uremia patients must cheer up!