For patients with IgA Nephropathy, ten-year survival rate is 80% to 90%. 20 years after diagnosis, about 20% to 30% of the kidney patients would enter uremia stage, and 1% to 2% of the kidney patients would enter end-stage renal disease(ESRD).
Many kidney patients would become very scared once they spot gross hematuria, and they would enter uremia eventually. In fact, the severity and frequency of hematuria has no direct relationship with the prognosis of the IgA Nephropathy. In general, the progression of IgA Nephropathy is slow, and this disease is less likely to progress into kidney failure than other types of kidney disease.
With that being said, patients with IgA Nephropathy should take this disease seriously. So patients should visit their doctors on a regular basis, stick with the treatment and do not cut back on medications on their own.
The major factors that influence prognosis of IgA Nephropathy include:
1. the gender of the patient: female patients tend to have better prognosis than male patients.
2. the starting age: on average, the children’s prognosis is better than adults. The prognosis for patients whose starting age is above 40 years old is usually not good.
3. patients whose GFR is already low and who has already kidney damage tend to have gloomy prognosis.
4. patients with less proteinuria tend to have better prognosis.
5. patients with normal blood pressure have better prognosis than patients with high blood pressure.
6. patients with the following pathological changes tend to worse prognosis: diffuse, proliferative glomerular damage with the formation of segmental or diffuse crescent, focal and segmental glomerular hardening or tubular atrophy, hardening arteriola, the thickening of the walls, the interstitial fibrosis and the deposits of IgA and C3.
