People often don’t worry about their kidneys until it’s too late

The main treatments are a proper diet and medications, and for those who reach ESRD, long term dialysis treatment or kidney transplantation.

In the early stages of kidney disease, a proper diet and medications may help to maintain the critical balances in the body that your kidneys would normally control.

However, when you have kidney failure, wastes and fluids accumulate in your body and you need dialysis treatments to remove these wastes and excess fluid from your blood. Dialysis can be done either by machine (hemodialysis) or by using fluid in your abdomen (peritoneal dialysis). In suitable patients a kidney transplant combined with medications and a healthy diet can restore normal kidney function.

Dialysis and kidney transplantation are known as renal replacement therapies (RRT) because they attempt to “replace” the normal functioning of the kidneys and are discussed in more detail below.

Kidney transplantation is considered the best treatment for many people with severe CKD because quality of life and survival are often better than in people who use dialysis. However, there is a shortage of organs available for donation.

Many people who are candidates for kidney transplantation are put on a transplant waiting list and require dialysis until an organ is available.

A kidney can come from a living relative, a living unrelated person, or from a person who has died (deceased or cadaver donor); only one kidney is required to survive. To stay safe, take care of your health and get your kidneys checked regularly. If you already have kidney problems, then take extra care of them and your health and visit a health care facility regularly. — @andile_tshuma