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April 30th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, April 30 (HealthDay News) — As many as one in 10
Americans have chronic kidney disease, but most don’t know it and for most
it is not a problem, experts say.
However, there has been debate about whether healthy people should be
screened for the condition. Now, a statement released Monday by the U.S.
Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) says no.
“The evidence is insufficient to make a definitive recommendation about
whether or not it’s effective to screen healthy people for chronic kidney
disease,” said committee chairwoman Dr. Joy Melnikow, director of the
Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at the University of California,
Davis. “I was surprised how little evidence there was about screening
healthy people.”
There were no studies of the effectiveness of the blood or urine tests
for creatinine, a marker of kidney function, in identifying who has
chronic kidney disease, Melnikow said.
“In addition, we don’t know if we intervene in healthy people with
chronic kidney disease, if intervention would change its course,” she
noted.
Most chronic kidney disease is mild and asymptomatic, Melnikow said.
“The rate of chronic kidney disease increases with age and, fortunately,
for most people it doesn’t affect them. But, in some people, it progresses
to serious chronic disease, which can require dialysis,” she
explained.
The USPSTF statement also calls for studies on identifying and treating
chronic kidney disease, she added.
“This statement only relates to screening healthy people, not to those
at high risk for kidney disease such as people with diabetes or high blood
pressure,” Melnikow stressed.
Dr. Ajay Singh, clinical chief of the renal division and director of
dialysis at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said that “the key
point that the USPSTF makes is that their recommendation of not screening
patients for chronic kidney disease applies to asymptomatic patients
without risk factors.”
The statement does acknowledge that there is evidence to support
screening of high-risk groups, Singh added.
“The real message is that, sadly, we have only a limited toolbox of
interventions to prevent progression of kidney disease once we identify
someone with chronic kidney disease. Yes, we can debate who should or
should not be screened, but what we really need are better interventions,”
Singh said.
Another expert, Dr. David Roth, clinical director of the division of
nephrology and hypertension at the University of Miami Miller School of
Medicine, added that “the evidence is not there that large-scale screening
of asymptomatic patients, especially elderly patients, is going to change
the outcome for that patient.”
Roth agreed that people in high-risk populations, such as those with
diabetes and/or high blood pressure, and blacks, should be screened.
“Kidney disease tends to be a silent disease until it’s in much more
advanced stages. For years, one can have kidney disease and not have a
clue, and you can lose a great percentage of kidney function before it’s
finally picked up,” Roth said.
Because most people lose kidney function with age, Roth thinks mass
screening of healthy people would find a lot of kidney disease, but that
would only worry people and wouldn’t change their medical care.
A study published in the April 17 issue of the Annals of Internal
Medicine came to the same conclusion.
In that study, researchers said that whether screening and monitoring
people in the earlier stages of the disease provides a benefit just isn’t
clear.
More information
For more on kidney disease, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
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