What is the relationship between the decrease in the glomerular filtration rate and cardiovascular disease?
Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have a substantial increase in risk for death from cardiovascular disease.
Even small decreases in kidney function, as measured by the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), are associated with this higher risk, and it increases progressively as kidney function declines.
Patients with CKD are substantially more likely to die from heart disease than progress to dialysis. In patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD), the risk for death is 10- to 100-fold higher than age- and gender-matched individuals without kidney disease.
Conversely, in patients with known heart disease (like coronary artery disease or heart failure), the greater the severity of kidney disease, the worse the patient outcome, including higher mortality and, in patients hospitalized for non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction, a longer length of stay.
