Wanna drive yourself nuts? Enjoy! 
LATEST eGFR Measurement Study News....MU... - Early CKD Support
LATEST eGFR Measurement Study News....MUST READ!!!
Written by
Marvin8
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20 Replies
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That's a wide margin!
Absolutely unreal. Almost makes eGFR worthless.
By the way I'm already nuts!
That is huge!!
Does this just make the case for cystatin c that much stronger?! Maybe the medical community will get on board with something else than egfr?
From what I've read over the past few years, the combined creatinine + cystatin c formula (CKD-EPI) was supposed to be so accurate (compared to creatinine alone) as to obviate the need for a true measured GFR. After reading this article, who the hell knows what to think any more? Nobody in the ckd community would have ever guessed that the margins for error could be so big. Maybe there's a reason most nephs just look at your creatinine levels? All I know is that this is rocking my world. To think that a person with an eGFR of 60 could actually be either 36 or 87 is absolutely mind-boggling.
Honestly I am not that surprised. I was taken a cyntography. According to the results my left kidney is participating to its function around 38% and the right kidney is participating 62%. Maybe it sounds stupid but to me I expect my eGFR to be around 50%. However it barely goes higher than 40. By the way my creatinine clearance is around 42%, which has way higher reliable than eGFR.
Presumably still OK for trending eg to indicate increases or decreases?
As I have said in many other posts, my different care providers, of different specialties, all tell me to ignore Egfr and simply monitor my Creatinine levels. And that this too is not completely accurate of overall health of the kidney it is a good way to monitor if things go up or down over time. As this study points out the inaccuracies of eGFR there are a lot of reasons why it is not the best. Think of what it does. It is really simple. It takes your Creatinine level at the moment of the test and then basically (simplified) says is the patient male or female. Then it goes to that "chart" and finds your Egfr based upon your Creatinine level. Now Naturally this cannot be very accurate. I mean look around you. See all the different sized and shaped people in this world. See how some are muscular, some or not, some are overweight by hundreds of pounds, others are so thin the wind blows them away. Some are healthy some have diseases (diabetes, cancer, etc.). Some have one kidney, some have two. Some take medications which affect how much Creatinine is eliminated from their body, others do not. So just knowing someone's age, sex, creatinine level is simply not enough to say this is your GFR level with a great deal of accuracy. It is as it is named, an estimate. It is NOT useless as it can be used to track trends over time. But then again so can just tracking Creatinine levels. Another "bad" thing about it is the stage definitions. Think of it. Your egfr changes too based upon hydrations, what you recently ate, exercise, etc., etc. So you go one time, get tested, drop the eGFR by a single digit, and suddenly you are classified Stage 4, not 3b, for example. The fear of God comes over you, that you are now Stage 4, and ruins you. Yet the next test you go up 1 point of 2 and you are no longer Stage 4 but have spent 2 or 3 months worried sick that you are. This is a good approach for the patient??? I think not. Stages, estimations, chart lookups based on what is typically normal for your age and sex?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I guess I didn't see a good deal of your posts. Thanks!
What I have read in some of the books is that Creatinine comes only from muscles and thus basing GFR on creatinine could lead to incorrect reesults.More accurate test is through Cystatin C measurement specially for older population
This is precisely why my nephrologist says he doesn’t pay much attention to the eGFR but focuses his attention on my creatinine level and urine protein — albumin ratio. He tells me not to worry about the eGFR levels.
I have CKD3b with a single kidney. Aged 73yrs.My last GFR was 36 down from 41 and Creatanine 127 up from 113.
I am now back on veggies, drinking 2L plus per day water.
Not sure what has caused this change but after having an appointment on the phone with my doctor he said it could be muscle cells breaking down from working out in the gym?
My nephrologist uses gfr as a guideline and advises me not to pay attention to the number. He looks at all the numbers to determine kidney functions.
That’ll do it Marvin. Actually the NIDDK info show that eGFR is accurate to within 30% of 80% of actual GFR. The kicker, UACR is just about as inaccurate!
Trends, baby, it’s all about trends in the data!
This drive me creasy.Just when i thought i started to understand how eGFR works.
