Dr Cynthia Delgado: Research Needed on Disability Experiences of Patients With CKD Over Time

Although many investigators have pushed the envelope in researching how patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) experience disabilities, there is still a need for more knowledge on how those disabilities evolve over time, according to Cynthia Delgado, MD, associate professor of medicine at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of California San Francisco Medical Center.

Transcript

What are some unanswered questions about quality of life in CKD?

Well, I think many investigators have really done a great job about pushing the ball forward and making the awareness, including Allison Tong, and Barrett Bowling, and Deidra Crews…and of course, Laura Plantinga and the DOPPS Research Group, but some of the things that I think really need to be really fleshed out is not just the diagnosis of the disability in a single time point, but really how that disability evolves with the individual over time. You know, we can’t just think of, “Okay, this person has this one issue right now,” and think that 5 years from now that one issue was addressed 5 years ago and nothing has changed.

So really, I think that the direction of how we achieve this alliance with our patients’ experiences is really looking towards how disability affects individuals and how that that disability affects the evolution of that disability over time with those individuals, because that’s the only way we’re going to pinpoint ways to make life better for our patients.