October 18, 2023
According to Dr. Eckardt, “In the last decade, clinicians have witnessed a surge in tools for diagnosing and treating chronic kidney disease, or CKD. The advent of precision medicine offers a promising avenue for tailoring therapies to individual patients, though it requires significant changes in nephrology care.”
The conference, held in Berlin, Germany, in June 2022, convened a global panel of patients and individuals with multidisciplinary clinical and scientific expertise to examine and discuss best practices for improving the precision of CKD diagnosis and prognosis, managing the complications of CKD, enhancing the safety of care, and maximizing patient quality of life.
Dr. Eckardt continued, “New drugs like SGLT2 inhibitors and a nonsteroidal mineralocorticoid antagonist show the potential to delay or even prevent kidney failure and reduce cardiovascular events. However, their implementation has been relatively slow and will require concerted efforts to improve diagnosis, staging, and access to care for all affected individuals. Given the rapid progress in the field, the need for standardization of measurements and reporting, independent of imaging modality, is clear. New imaging measures must be shown to be valid tools for testing hypotheses in a research setting, and then shown to be clinically useful and cost-effective in the routine management of patients.”
The resulting report highlights key conclusions from the conference, including critical strategies and interventions for enhancing CKD patient care. The report emphasizes the importance of integrating CKD management with treatment of comorbidities, offering translation services, and providing culturally and financially sensitive care for disadvantaged populations.
Dr. Kramer emphasized, “Exciting strides have been made in CKD diagnosis, and new treatment strategies have emerged since the publication of KDIGO’s 2012 CKD Guideline. The expanded toolkit for diagnosing and treating CKD provides optimism for improved patient care. We now need to fully harness these advances for better care with a proactive approach and recognition of patient experiences to inform research strategies and optimize care delivery.”
