(HealthDay News) — About 1 in 3 African American patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) would be reclassified to a more severe CKD stage if the race classifier were removed from the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) equation, according to a study published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Salman Ahmed, MD, MPH, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues examined the impact of the race multiplier for African Americans in the CKD-EPI estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) equation on CKD classification and care delivery. Data were included for 2225 African American patients in the Partners HealthCare System CKD Registry.
The researchers found that if the race multiplier were removed from the CKD-EPI equation, 33.4% of the African American patients would hypothetically be reclassified to a more severe CKD stage; 24.3% would be reclassified from stage 3B to stage 4 and 3.1% would be reassigned from eGFR >20 to ≤20 mL/min/1.73 m², meeting the criterion for accumulating kidney transplant priority. After the race multiplier was removed, 64 patients were reclassified from eGFR >20 to ≤20 mL/min/1.73 m²; none of these patients were referred, evaluated, or waitlisted for kidney transplant compared with 19.2% of African American patients with eGFR ≤20 mL/min/1.73 m² using the default CKD-EPI equation.
Continue Reading
“Considering the inequities in kidney care and outcomes for Black patients, use of the eGFR race correction factor needs to be reconsidered,” a coauthor said in a statement.
One author disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Reference
Ahmed S, Nutt CT, Eneanya ND, et al. Utilization in Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate Calculation on African-American Care Outcomes. J Gen Intern Med.
