Clinical impact of the Kidney Failure Risk Equation for vascular access planning

Recommendations for European laboratories based on the KDIGO 2024 Clinical Practice Guideline for the Evaluation and Management of Chronic Kidney Disease

The 2024 Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) guidelines for chronic kidney disease (CKD) evaluation and management bring important updates, particularly for European laboratories. These guidelines emphasize the need for harmonization in CKD testing, promoting the use of regional equations. In Europe, the European Kidney Function Consortium (EKFC) equation is particularly suited for European populations, particularly compared to the CKD-EPI 2021 race-free equation. A significant focus is placed on the combined use of creatinine and cystatin C to estimate glomerular filtration rate (eGFRcr-cys), improving diagnostic accuracy. In situations where eGFR may be inaccurate or clinically insufficient, the guidelines encourage the use of measured GFR (mGFR) through exogenous markers like iohexol. These guidelines emphasize the need to standardize creatinine and cystatin C measurements, ensure traceability to international reference materials, and adopt harmonized reporting practices. The recommendations also highlight the importance of incorporating risk prediction models, such as the Kidney Failure Risk Equation (KFRE), into routine clinical practice to better tailor patient care. This article provides a European perspective on how these KDIGO updates should be implemented in clinical laboratories to enhance CKD diagnosis and management, ensuring consistency across the continent.

Personalized decision-making for vascular access creation in hemodialysis

Selecting the appropriate kidney replacement therapy (KRT) is crucial in order to secure optimal care for chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Next to renal transplantation, the choice of dialysis modality directly affects patient well-being, treatment effectiveness, and long-term outcomes. Therefore, clinical decision-making must take into account a range of factors to tailor decisions to each patient's unique needs. Previously, when the dialysis population was less diverse and resources more limited, straight-forward algorithms could be effectively implemented both for selection of KRT as well as for hemodialysis (HD) vascular access (VA). Recently, the growing ESRD population with more elderly being considered for dialysis care together with improved treatment opportunities have resulted in more challenging decision-making where on-size-fits-all strategies are being replaced by more tailored and personalized strategies aimed to ensure "the right dialysis access - to the right patient - at the right time - for the right reason." In this review, recent trends enforcing a more personalized approach in the selection of VA for HD are summarized and discussed, where these concerns have become especially relevant.