UTILITY OF CALCULATED GLOMERULAR FILTRATION RATE IN EVALUATION OF KIDNEY FUNCTION

Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is characterized by glomerular filtration rate (GFR) <60mL/min/1.73m 2 for ≥3months regardless of the underlying cause. Serum creatinine is commonly used investigation to evaluate renal function. Because of large reserve capacity of kidney, serum creatinine level may remain within normal limit evenif GFR is significantly decreased. Objectives: This study was done to evaluate utility and superiority of calculated GFR (eGFR) over serum creatinine level to detect kidney function impairment. Materials and methods: forty subjects with chronic renal disease were selected for the present study. Serum creatinine level was estimated using commercially available kit based on Jaffe’s method. Creatinine clearance was calculated using Cockcroft-Gault’s formula and GFR was calculated using MDRD formula. Results: Majority of the patients were at stage III and stage IV of CKD as per NKF-KDOQI guideline. Out of 40 patients, 8 patients were having serum creatinine level<1.3mg/dL but 6 patients out of those 8 were having GFR<60mL/min/1.73m 2 . Conclusion: Use of these formulae for evaluation of GFR can be useful to detect the patients with abnormal GFR in spite of having normal serum creatinine level. Such cases can be missed if clinicians rely only upon serum creatinine value. These formulae may prove an economical alternate to direct measurement of GFR.