The registries report demographic data, incidence, prevalence, and outcome (Castledine et al., 2011). Due to the low organ donor rate and an increasing need for donors, my research topic will be about the methods in which to increase the number of organ donors in the US. .
Kidney Disease Overview .
Before the advent of a standard definition, many people thought kidney disease a rare occurrence that only affected a minimal percent of the population (O'Toole, & Sedor, 2014). A uniform definition of kidney shows that kidney disease is more prevalent and has a higher incidence rate than previously thought (O'Toole, & Sedor, 2014). According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 20 million Americans have chronic kidney disease (CKD) (O'Toole, & Sedor, 2014). Although there are treatments for patients with CKD, most CKD patients progress to developing kidney failure (O'Toole, & Sedor, 2014).
There are five stages of CKD (Mallappalil, Friedman, Delano, McFarlane, & Salifu, 2014). In the first stage, the patient has kidney damage but maintains normal kidney function (Mallappalil et al., 2014). In the second stage, the patient has kidney damage with a mild loss of kidney function. In stage 3a, the patient has mild to moderate loss of kidney function while in stage 3b, there is moderate to severe loss of kidney function (Mallappalil et al., 2014). In the fourth stage, kidney function is severely disabled (Mallappalil et al., 2014). Stage five is when the patient is considered to have kidney failure (Mallappalil et al., 2014).
With the emergence of novel technology becoming more available, the collection of data increases while the price to collect data decreases (O'Toole, & Sedor, 2014). This data helps to study the human population, and it allows for phenotyping and linkage with clinical data from the electronic database of health records (O'Toole, & Sedor, 2014). This allows for observational, cohort, and cross-sectional studies that are more accurate (O'Toole, & Sedor, 2014).