Hi all. I have a question. I started to seach the web for an answer and I am not finding an answer that really gives me an explanation that I can understand.

Just a brief background. I am 53 years old and was born with one kidney. Three years ago I ended up in the hospital for a number of reasons. One reason was that I was there was for kidney failure and went thru 3 treatments of kidney dialysis.

Recently I started to see a neprhologist since the creatine levels were high. He felt from the beginning that I had kidney disease and the one kidney I has was functioning at about 30 percent. I am on some medication to help protect the kidney.

Today I had an office visit and everything seems to be running smoothly. The medication seems to be keeping everything under control and no further or advancement of the disease.

When I arrived home I quickly looked at the copy of his bill which also had checked off several things for diagnosis. He checked off the following:

1. Diabetic Nephropathy
2. Chronic kidney disease Stage 3
3. but also under the section titled Hypertension-secondary, the term Panenchymal was checked off

I tried to find an easy to understand definition of Panenchymal and how it relates to the kidney, but I couldn't find something that I understand. Has anyone heard of this before and if so can you explain what it is ?

Thanks for listening.

Allan

Hi. The reason you couldn't find anything is due to the typo. The word is parenchymal (r, not n). The parenchymal tissue is the tissue between the nephrons in the kidney. If you google parenchymal hypertension, you will find a number of articles. The bottom line is that the hypertension is most likely due to the kidney disease.

Given what you listed, it is sort of a chicken and egg argument. You don't know if the diabetes caused the hypertension and kidney disease or if the hypertension caused the kidney disease, or what came first. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. The better you take care of yourself (you bp and your sugar levels) the better off you will be and the slower the progression of your kidney disease.

I wouldn't put to much stock into what "stage" you are at. Symptoms don't come with any particular "stage" of kidney disease. Some symptoms you may or may not get and they may arrive early or later. You just don't know. I just hope that you feel well.

Good luck to you and just post if you have more questions.

Cora