A kidney was the first successfully transplanted human organ. As as the case with much medicine, the journey to that success was fraught with a lot of trial and error. (That paper is worth a read in its own right.) Did you know that when a new kidney is transplanted, the old one is left attached to the aorta and vena cava to wither and shrink? The new kidney is attached to the iliac artery and iliac vein, somewhat down in your pelvis. Anyways, the science of kidney transplant was developed, appropriately, out of a need to replace failed kidneys. As you know, kidney failure is permanent; kidneys cannot regenerate the filters – called nephrons – that clean your blood. These days your providers have a multitude of ways recognizing kidney disease. These include recognizing the conditions that cause kidney disease, addressing risk factors, and identifying warning signs of encroaching kidney disease.

Kidney disease can develop from conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, prolonged obstruction of the urinary tract, inflammation of component parts of the kidney, kidney trauma, and medications (this is only a partial list). Some of these conditions are risk factors that can increase your risk of kidney disease, but so are heart disease, smoking, obesity, or certain ethnicities. Additionally, because you only have a finite number of nephrons, old age is considered a risk factor.

Any patient’s frustration for being diagnosed with kidney failure must naturally be compounded by finding out it was due to negligence. The malpractice may be due to the failure of a provider to recognize and/or followup on abnormal creatinine levels; especially in the setting of a patient with hypertension. Or, a radiologist could misinterpret imaging abnormalities and fail to recognize a urinary tract obstruction. Providers have several ways to identify developing kidney disease, and failing to do so can lead to a medical negligence claim.