Essay Sample on Treating Chronic Kidney Disease: Investing in Research for Improved Care

Investment and research in clinical practice have seen the development of different nursing interventions and plans to improve patient care for different people. Critical understanding of the condition indicates that it comes along several other comorbidities. Therefore, the treatment of chronic kidney disease takes into consideration several complications that come with it, such as anemia, bone disease, heart disease, metabolic disorders, and fluid buildup. Besides, the treatment of the disease involves observation and the drafting of the personalized plans for each and every patient. Most of these conditions need to be considered before making an informed decision on how to treat the patient. All the same, personal and clinical interventions and plans are used in the management of chronic kidney disease.

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Several principles can be used in the first stages of the disease. Primary care management is the most prescribed methodology for treating chronic kidney disease. The effectiveness of primary care treatment is the observation of the extent of the disease. In many models, the very first effective way to treat chronic kidney disease is to control complications that arise with it. Indeed, most of the deaths accrued to chronic kidney disease have been recorded to have been caused by the other complications associated with the disease (Tsang et al., 2015). Therefore, with primary interventions such as observation of the blood pressure of the patient, their bone calcium content, among other tests that involve common body operations, the general wellbeing of the patient can be identified. Once a patient has been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, the complications are always expected. Monitoring them makes sure that they are treated in time, which in return, saves the patient from having to suffer their detrimental effects where they would be almost unmanageable.

To ensure the right treatment of people with chronic kidney disease, medical practitioners across the world have been looking into the aspect of self-management interventions. This entails the ability of a person to change their lifestyle to meet the needs of treatment. The treatment of the issues underlying the chronic condition, as well as that of the other complications that may arise, requires medical officers to work closely with the patients (Peng et al., 2019). The effectiveness of the approach is attained when the patients are not admitted. It is restricted because of the limited ability of the patients to observe the offered instructions fully and adopt a lifestyle change. In self-management, patients are required to work with their medical officer to come up with goals that they must realize, and how to act in case an adverse event develops.

The net effect of self-management approaches has been stated to be high. Reports indicate that patients who set goals together with their doctors on the process of treatment can avoid certain foods such as proteins, take the necessary measures of other foods, maintain their blood pressure effectively, increase their exercise capacity and contain their urinary protein volume (Peng et al., 2019). These all together improve the efficacy of standard treatment and provides better chances for standard treatment to work. Nonetheless, the intervention is shallow and does not offer the best treatment approaches because it has no direct renal benefits, and neither does it prevent mortality.

In clinical settings, chronic kidney disease has no cure. What takes place is a treatment aimed at the management of the condition. Treatment usually consists of measures to alleviate some of the symptoms whose adverse effect is high. Control of signs and symptoms is necessary because it ensures that patients lead consistent lives even when they are in a very diminishing state of health. Treatment of the condition also involves reducing complications. But the most effective kind of treatment is that which is directed towards ensuring a slow progression of the disease (Tsang et al., 2015). This intervention seeks to ensure that even though the state of the kidneys is deteriorating, it does not reach an end-stage faster. Nonetheless, kidney damage in the chronic case continues to happen even when treatment takes place.

Some of the complications that are treated are blood pressure, cholesterol levels, anemia, and swelling, protection of hones, and minimization of waste products in the blood. To lower blood pressure, most of the patients who suffer chronic kidney disease may need medications that have receptor blockers and enzyme ACE inhibitors. Lowering blood pressure helps in ensuring the functionality of the kidney, which would have been worse, and more harm could happen if not controlled. Statins may also be used to lower cholesterol levels as it would increase the risk of a heart attack, which is a leading cause of death among patients suffering from chronic kidney disease. Treatment of anemia sometimes becomes quintessential as statistics show that people who suffer chronic kidney disease may also be susceptible to anemia. Also, relieving swelling helps maintain fluid balance to provide an optimal state for the performance of the kidney (Quinones et al., 2019). Protection of bones through the provision of calcium and vitamin D is also part of the essential interventions since they prevent damage of blood vessels and even fracturing, which would harden the process of treatment for the patient. It is necessary to observe, however, that these approaches only seek to provide optimal conditions for the primary treatment.

Two of the most effective approaches used in the active treatment of chronic kidney disease are dialysis and transplant. Kidney dialysis is highly used for people with the condition. It is used to help the body perform some of the basic functions that the kidney used to perform (Pham et al., 2015). Chronic kidney disease often reaches a position where the kidneys can never operate as effectively again. Excretion of wastes, especially those coming from proteins, often becomes hard. Once dialysis has been undertaken, it can be used alongside the self-management interventions to ensure that the patient is safe and healthy even when medical practitioners are not observing them. The average time of treatment for patients on dialysis is not too long, and they reach an end-stage after a few years.

Kidney transplant is a last-resort intervention for kidney failure as a result of chronic kidney disease. It entails receiving a healthy kidney from a donor, and the affected kidneys are removed, and that from the donor used to replace them. Though quite an intensive process, kidney transplant has been acknowledged to have such a high success rate. Most of the patients who go through kidney transplantation rarely have issues with their renal health later (Pham et al., 2015). Even though there are cases of relapse, they are not as many, and the process is not that complicated. Therefore, when necessary, medical practitioners have been finding a kidney transplant as a viable and effective way to address chronic kidney disease. It is, however, effective when a kidney donor is available.

Owing to the large scale of interventions that could be undertaken in the treatment of chronic kidney disease, plans are personalized for every patient. A thorough observation of the patient must be ensured to observe the complications that could be arising in the process of treatment. Generally, all these interventions seek to reduce the progression of the disease. Active treatment inclusive of dialysis and transplant may, however, require closer working together with the patient to understand their most preferred method of treatment. Improvement in patient-involvement and personalization of treatment for every single patient is necessary to ensure better clinical outcomes for every single patient suffering from the condition.

References

Peng, S., He, J., Huang, J., Lun, L., Zeng, J., Zeng, S., ... & Wu, Y. (2019). Self-management interventions for chronic kidney disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC nephrology, 20(1), 142. DOI: 10.1186/s12882-019-1309-y.

Pham, P. T., Everly, M., Faravardeh, A., & Pham, P. C. (2015). Management of patients with a failed kidney transplant: dialysis reinitiation, immunosuppression weaning, and transplantectomy. World journal of nephrology, 4(2), 148. DOI: 10.5527/wjn.v4.i2.148.

Quinones, H., Hamdi, T., Sakhaee, K., Pasch, A., Moe, O. W., & Pak, C. Y. (2019). Control of metabolic predisposition to cardiovascular complications of chronic kidney disease by effervescent calcium magnesium citrate: a feasibility study. Journal of nephrology, 32(1), 93-100. DOI: 10.1007/s40620-018-0559-2.

Tsang, J. Y., Blakeman, T., Hegarty, J., Humphreys, J., & Harvey, G. (2015). Understanding the implementation of interventions to improve the management of chronic kidney disease in primary care: a rapid realist review. Implementation Science, 11(1), 47. Retrieved April 8, 2020, from https://implementationscience.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13012-016-0413-7