Prevalence and incidence of chronic kidney disease stage G5 in Japan

The prevalence and incidence of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) have continued to increase worldwide. Japan was known as having the highest prevalence of ESKD in the world; however, Taiwan took this place in 2001, with the USA still in third position. However, the prevalence data from Japan and Taiwan consisted of dialysis patients only. The prevalence and incidence of Kidney Transplantation (KT) in Japan were quite low, and the number of KT patients among those with ESKD was regarded as negligibly small. However, the number of KT recipients has increased recently. Furthermore, there are no reports about nationwide surveys on the prevalence and incidence of predialysis chronic kidney failure patients in Japan. This review describes our recent study on the estimated number of chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage G5 patients and the number of ESKD patients living in Japan, obtained via the cooperation of five related medical societies. From the results, as of Dec 31, 2007, 275,242 patients had received dialysis therapy and 10,013 patients had a functional transplanted kidney, and as of Dec 31, 2008, 286,406 patients had received dialysis therapy and 11,157 patients had a functional transplanted kidney. Consequently, there were 285,255 patients with CKD who reached ESKD and were living in Japan in 2008 and 297,563 in 2009. We also estimated that there were 67,000 predialysis CKD stage G5 patients in 2009, 37,365 patients introduced to dialysis therapy, and 101 patients who received pre-emptive renal transplantation in this year. In total, there were 37,466 patients who newly required renal replacement therapy (RRT) in 2009. Not only the average ages, but also the primary renal diseases of the new ESKD patients in each RRT modality were different.