Pattern of renal diseases and the need for establishment of renal biopsy registry in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Renal disease is a common medical problem in Saudi Arabia. Varieties of renal lesions if not treated properly or not discovered early will lead to a chronic kidney disease. Identifying the types of renal lesions can help in identifying the high-risk patients and appropriate treatment can be provided. Glomerulonephritis (GN) is considered one of the leading causes of end-stage renal disease in Saudi Arabia. The prevalence of different renal lesions were identified by different reports; however, these reports showed inconsistency. One important reason for such differences is related to the lack of unified methods in diagnosing and processing renal tissues and to the fact that different reports were reported by different pathologists. In addition, the differences in the reported results may reflect patient selection biases for renal biopsy or to the different policies and protocols adopted by different nephrologists. This is a prospective, multicenter study that involves different patients from different institutes and from different regions in Saudi Arabia to delineate the pattern of renal diseases based on renal biopsies. Four hundred and five cases were selected and studied over two years. This preliminary report shows that the most common primary renal lesion in Saudi Arabia is focal segmental glomerulosclerosis in 24.1%, followed by IgA nephropathy (15.2%), mesangioproliferative non-IgA, (13.2%), and membranoproliferative GN (12.4%). Lupus nephritis was the most common cause of secondary GN in 66% of the secondary causes.