Creatinine clearance in clinical medicine.

Clearance of endogenous creatinine offers a reliable clinical means of determining quantitative renal damage. The rate of clearance (Ccr) is obtained by relating the amount of creatinine filtered by the glomerulus per unit of time to the concentration of creatinine in the serum. The technic is simple and practical for routine use. Since 1948, the creatinine clearance determination has been used extensively at the University of California Medical Center for the evaluation of renal function. The present report reviews our selected experience with this procedure during the past 14 years. Clinical examples are used to show that the Ccr is a more accurate index of glomerular filtration than the concentration of any of the nonprotein nitrogen components of the blood.