Being active and having a healthy body weight is also important to kidney health. This system factors in your: The serum creatine blood test is highly sensitive. To determine eGFR, your provider uses a National Kidney Foundation calculating system. - Follow a healthy low-salt, low-saturated-fat eating plan. These filters help remove waste and excess fluid from the blood. People of African ancestry have a higher eGFR. No matter what your eGFR is, ask your doctor when you should be tested again and what other tests you should have. Avoid highly processed foods. What is the NKF doing to address concerns about using race in measuring eGFR? Upload your lab report and well interpret and provide you with recomendations today. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2020:chap 23. If your EGFR is low, then the suspicion is you may have a kidney problem. Also, normal GFR will vary among ethnic groups. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Aside from CKD, creatinine levels can be affected by other factors including diet; muscle(weight of your muscles); malnutrition; and other chronic illnesses. NKF is working to help identify, confront and reverse them, Confirming that kidney function is normal for a potential living kidney donor, Making sure the right dose of medicine is used, Enrollment in clinical trials that use kidney function as an inclusion or exclusion criterion, Making sure the right type of imaging tests and dyes are used, When to refer someone to a nephrologist or kidney doctor, When to start an evaluation for a kidney transplant. You may ask your doctor if cystatin C-based eGFR is a better test for you. GFR is the best measure of kidney function, but creatinine can also be a helpful indicator of your kidney health. A plus sign next to the number [1+, 2+, etc] means that the information is found within the full scientific study rather than the abstract. For example, if you have, , the most important thing you can do to protect your remaining kidney function is to keep your blood sugar under control. Early-stage kidney disease does not normally have any symptoms. If the EGFR is very low, then this suggests that kidney . The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". The task force has been seeking the input of kidney disease experts to come up with the best way to make the eGFR test as accurate as possible. - Stay at a healthy weight. Learn about eGFR (estimated glomerular filtration rate), what it means and what you should do based on your result. BUN and creatinine will not increase above normal until more than 50% of total kidney function is lost [5, 3]! A kidney biopsy may be needed, depending on the results of the previous tests. NKFs educational offerings include the impact of kidney disease ondiverse communities, and the reasons why communities of color have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19.