Definition of chronic kidney disease and measurement of kidney function in original research papers: a review of the literature

• Published in: Nephrology, dialysis, transplantation dialysis, transplantation, 2011-09, Vol.26 (9), p.2793-2798
• Main Authors: Anderson, Jocelyn, Glynn, Liam G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anesthesia. Intensive care medicine. Transfusions. Cell therapy and gene therapy; Biological and medical sciences; Emergency and intensive care: renal failure. Dialysis management; Glomerular Filtration Rate; Humans; Intensive care medicine; Kidney Failure, Chronic - physiopathology; Kidney Function Tests; Kidneys; Medical sciences; Nephrology. Urinary tract diseases; Review Literature as Topic; Tumors of the urinary system
• ISSN: 0931-0509; 1460-2385
• DOI: 10.1093/ndt/gfq849

Background. Over the past decade, chronic kidney disease (CKD) has become an area of intensive clinical and epidemiological research. Despite the clarity provided by the Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (KDOQI) guidelines, there appears to be within the CKD research literature significant disagreement on how to define CKD and measure kidney function. Methods. The objectives of this study were to investigate the variety of methods used to define CKD and to measure kidney function in original research papers as well as to investigate whether the quality of the journal had any effect on the quality of the methodology used. This was a descriptive review and not a meta-analysis. Information was extracted from each article including publication details (including the journal's impact factor), definition of CKD, method used to estimate kidney function and quantity of serum creatinine readings used to define CKD. An electronic search of MEDLINE through OVID was completed using the search term CKD. The search was limited to articles in English published in 2009. Studies were included in the review only if they were original research articles including patients with CKD. Articles were excluded if they reported data from a paediatric population, a population solely on dialysis or if there was no full-text access through OVID. Each article was assessed for quality with respect to using KDOQI CKD definition criteria. A description of the pooled data was completed and chi-square tests were used to investigate the relation between article quality and journal quality. Analysis was carried out using SPSS (15.0) and a P-value of