Levels of Renal Failure

Renal, or kidney, failure indicates that your kidneys have lost the ability to remove dangerous waste products from your blood. With renal failure, it's important to delay or prevent further damage to your kidney function. Thus, it's important to understand and know what your level of kidney function is.

Function

• Your doctor determines the level of your kidney function via a glomerular filtration rate (GFR) test. The rate is calculated using factors like age, sex and race along with a blood creatinine test. This test measures the amount of creatinine, a chemical waste product your kidneys filters out of your blood. When your kidneys do not function properly, the creatinine accumulates in your blood.

Mild Levels

• With a level one, a GFR result of 90 or greater indicates there is kidney damage. However, level two means there's both kidney damage and mild kidney decrease in function. This means your GFR is 60-89, according to the National Kidney Foundation (NKF).

Advanced Levels

• With moderate, or a rate of 30-59, there's a moderate decrease in kidney function. A GFR of 15-29 indicates that your function is severely decreased. Level five GFR means your kidney functions at 15 or less.

Treatment

• Kidney failure means treating the underlying cause. This cause can be high blood pressure or diabetes.

Warning

• If you're at GFR level five, you'll need dialysis or a kidney transplant, according to NKF.