NUR427
October 3, 2011
Personal Impact: Living with Chronic End-Stage Renal Disease
The Chronic disease I chose is chronic end-stage renal disease. End-stage renal disease is when there is a permanent loss of total renal function. End-stage renal disease, is also known as chronic kidney disease (CKD), with five stages. The fifth stage is the most severe stage, this is when the patient needs to begin dialysis, or be transplanted to survive. The Center for Disease Prevention and Control ranks End stage renal disease the ninth leading cause of death in the United States ("Center For Disease Control And Prevention", 2010). New cases of ESRD in African Americans is 3.7 times greater than the rate of Caucasians (Wells, 2011).
Conditions that can be contributing factors in loss of renal function are: Diabetes, Hypertension, Glomerulonephritis, Cystic Kidney, and a list of others. Signs and symptoms of kidney failure are: decreased amount of urine, edema, shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting, poor appetite, metallic taste in the mouth, hiccups, weight loss or weight gain with fluid, fatigue, confusion or mental slowness, leg cramps and itching. These symptoms can present together or by themselves.
Anyone can develop kidney failure due to a number of reasons. The people more at risk for developing kidney disease are older people, African-Americans, those who have a family history of CKD especially polycystic disease, Latinos and American Indians especially with type 2 diabetes.
As of 2008 there were more than 550,000 patients receiving renal replacement therapy, coined RRT. The types of renal replacement include, hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, home hemodialysis, and transplantation. The cost of ESRD programs in 2008 was approximately 39.46 billion dollars annually, and has grown every year since.
Patient Interview
Debra Jones is a 53 year old, African-American female, who has
References: Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010) kidney disease. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/ Larsen, P.D., & Lubkin, I.M. (2009). Chronic Illness: Impact and intervention (7th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett. Wells, J. R. (2011, March-April). Hemodialysis Knowledge and Medical Adherence in African Americans Diagnosis with End Stage Renal Disease: Results of an Education Intervention. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 38(2), 155-161.