Kidney Diseases
(asked on 20th December 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to improve the diagnosis and treatment of kidney failure in the UK.
As health is a devolved matter, steps being taken to improve the diagnosis and treatment of kidney failure in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be a matter for the administrations of those countries respectively.
In England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance Chronic kidney (CKD) disease in adults: assessment and management, updated in July 2014, sets out best practice for clinicians in the management of CKD. The guidance covers identification and monitoring of patients at risk; pharmacological management and referral where appropriate, and aims to ensure patients remain healthy and avoid kidney failure, if possible. In August 2013, NICE published Acute kidney injury: prevention, detection and management. The guidance emphasises early intervention and stresses the importance of risk assessment and prevention, early recognition and treatment to avoid kidney failure. Both sets of guidance can be found at the following links:
In addition to putting in place evidence based guidance to support clinicians to diagnose problems of the kidney, we are also working to detect people at risk of kidney disease. The NHS Health Check programme, which launched in 2008, is a universal and systematic programme for everyone between the ages of 40-74 years (not already on a chronic disease register) that assesses people’s health and risk of developing certain health problems. It is estimated that the programme could detect at least 20,000 cases of diabetes or kidney disease earlier, allowing individuals to be better managed and to improve their quality of life.