I have never heard any of my Nephrologists make this kind of statements I know eGFR is an estimate but it shows there is something wrong, alone with creatinine, bun, etc they make decisions on your kidney health. I have never heard someone going from an eGFR of 100 to failure either, unless there is trauma or disease of some kind. My mother was on dialysis from diabetes for years, but even that took several years to materialize into kidney failure.
I think what Kaladryn
may be saying is that you need to take the whole picture into consideration and that eGFR
without the presence of kidney disease can often add little. The key word is for those without CKD or kidney injury. For instance my eGFR sucks balls (using creatinine only). My 24 hour urine, cystatin c, microalbumin/creatinine, etc. is perfect. BP perfect, A1c perfect, no family history. My actual kidney function and health is likely significantly better than those with much higher eGFR's (based on creatinine).
For me and my nephrologist his thought is more forget eGFR for a patient
with normal kidney function, let's run multiple tests, analyze risk factors, review family history and risk factors (ie bp) and ask ourselves if your kidneys are healthy and running optimally and are you at risk.
Now in CKD patients it is totally different.
Here is an example...there is a patient I've gotten to know with lower creatinine than me and a better eGFR with horrible kidney function.
I mean look at our population I can make my eGFR (creatinine based one) go from 60 to 120 in a month. My actual GFR is not changing yet my eGFR can bounce 60 points. If I had CKD it wouldn't work like that. Heck use Cystatin C (which some say is better) and my GFR is like 130 to 160.
So for me, a healthy individual, in a months time I have an eGFR of 60, 64, 127, 143, and 168 with no actual change in GFR. Meaning, I'm not bouncing from CKD stage 1 to "OMG BEST KIDNEYS EVER!". There is no actual GFR change but radical doubling and halving of eGFR.
I'm also not saying eGFR is a throw away number I'm just not sure how much use or real data it gives people who do not have CKD.