Approach of Kidney Disease in Dogs and Cats

Chronic kidney disease is one of the great challenges in daily life of veterinary doctors, and the lack of
knowledge on this subject leads us to question on how we can generate early diagnoses and thus,
more effective therapeutic treatments. To what extent can treating kidney disease be effective if the
mechanisms with which the kidney works are unknown?. We know that under normal conditions the
kidney nephrons of dogs and cats are prepared to maintain homeostasis in the body, this mechanism
is most often sustained until advanced stages of disease. In chronic kidney disease, regardless of the
type of initial injury, the frames of the different diseases are usually degenerative, chronic and
progressive, and the damage caused to the kidneys is irreversible, thus deteriorating the glomeruli,
tubules and interstitium, culminating with nephron death and progressive decrease in glomerular
filtration rate; This condition causes the animal to manifest clinical symptoms when there is a change
from the phase of the disease to insufficiency. In the disease, morphophysiological adaptations are
established that allow the kidneys to maintain balance in the body; when these adaptations attend a
critical point in company with the exacerbation of the compensatory mechanisms, the onset of
functional deficit is generated, initially characterized by the incapacity of the renal tubule to
concentrate urine, generating polyuria with compensatory polydipsia, finally rendering the kidneys
insufficient to maintain homeostasis, frame known as kidney failure, a condition in which more than
75% of the kidneys are not functional; clinically at this stage there is not to much to do. This book was
produced with the purpose of make easier to the small animal clinician, understand the functioning,
diagnosis and treatment of the renal system.