Patients with Polycystic Kidney Disease(PKD) Should Pay More Attention to Its Complications

Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) is a common genetic disease. In most cases, the patients do not have symptoms in the early time so they often just pay no attention to the disease. However, as the disease develops, a series of horrible complications are approaching them silently.

1. Back pain

As the cysts enlarge, they will oppress the kidney tissues and neighboring organs thus causing pain. What’s worse, some big cysts will rupture thus causing bleed in cysts, which can cause the patients feel violent pain suddenly. In the traditional medicines, the doctors just suggest pain killer to remit the pain or surgery to shrink the cysts. However, those methods only provide the temporary relief and can not solve the problem from its root.

2. Headache

Some patients with PKD have severe headache that might be caused by cerebral aneurysm- balloon of blood vessels in brain. These aneurysms could rupture thus causing severe headache and even death. Hypertension is an important factor in causing aneurysm. Therefore, the patients with PKD must control their blood pressure within the normal range.

3. Urinary tract infection

Patients with PKD often have urinary tract infection, which is also a cause of pain. Once patients have urinary tract infection, they should seek treatment at once because infection can spread to cysts. It will be more difficult to treat the infection in cysts for much antibiotics can not penetrate the cysts.

4. Hypertension

As the cysts enlarge, they will oppress the kidney tissues and affect the normal secretion of renin thus causing Hypertension. High blood pressure is an important factor in aggravating the disease. If the patients can keep a healthy lifestyle and take medicines rationally to make their blood pressure in control, it will slow down PKD progression.

5. Hematuria

With the cysts enlargement, they will oppress kidney and neighboring tissues thus causing the small blood vessels to rupture. As kidney intrinsic cells are damaged and lose their barrier function, the red blood cells will leak into urine. In addition, some patients with PKD may have urinary tract infection and kidney stone, which also can cause blood in urine.


However, many patients with PKD just treat these symptoms, but do not treat the disease from its root. As a result, their renal function will decline gradually thus developing into Renal Failure at last.