Epidemiology and risk factors of chronic kidney disease in the El-Sharkia Governorate, Egypt.

End-stage renal disease (ESRD) is increasing worldwide. Renal replacement therapy and kidney transplantation are increasing the burden on health systems. Various risk factors can lead to this disease. In this work, we tried to study the epidemiology and risk factors of chronic kidney diseases (CKDs) in one of the Egyptian areas (El-Sharkia Governorate), and from this study we can get some data about the distribution and most common causes of this disease. A cross-sectional study was conducted at 15 dialysis centers in governmental hospitals in ElSharkia, Egypt. We used a questionnaire and direct interviewing with ESRD patients in addition to using medical records for our data collections. One thousand and four patients were selected randomly from 2136 patients who were known CKD patients on regular hemodialysis. Each week, two to three visits were performed in each center and during each visit, direct interviews were performed for ten to 15 patients, which took about 30 min for each patient. The study sample (n = 1004 patients) consisted of 62.2% males and 37.8% females. The mean age of patients was 52.03 + 14.67 years. The highest percentage of patients (31.9%) was found to be between 50 and 60 years in both males and females. More than half (61.3%) of the ESRD patients were living in villages, while about one-third (38.7%) of the ESRD patients were living in cities. Hypertension and diabetes were the main causes of ESRD. 15.5% of ESRD patients had diabetes mellitus, 31.8% had hypertension, 8.4% had kidney stone, 8.8% had urinary tract infection, 4.6% had congenital abnormality and 3.7% had primary glomerulonephritis. The main risk factors of renal diseases are hypertension and diabetes, while unknown causes represent a high percentage of all causes by 17.7%. Primary glomerulonephritis is the lowest cause of CKD in the El-Sharkia governorate, Egypt.