End-stage renal disease and chronic kidney disease in Brazil.

The world is facing an epidemic of chronic kidney disease (CKD). This report discusses the present state of chronic kidney disease care in Brazil. We report frequency of dialysis treatment and prevalence of kidney transplantation throughout Brazil. We estimated the number of CKD patients in the country through a mathematical extrapolation based on data generated by the NHANES. On January 2007, 73,605 patients were on dialysis, which corresponds to 390 patients per million of population (pmp); the majority of these patients (approximately 90%) were funded by the Brazilian Public Health System. If we aggregate patients with a functioning kidney graft, unofficially estimated by ABTO as 27,500 (approximately 150 pmp), the whole adjusted prevalence of end-stage renal disease patients in Brazil by January 2007 is approximately 540 pmp. We estimate that the number of patients with glomerular filtration rate < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 of body surface approximates 15 million people in Brazil, many of whom are not in treatment.