This came up at my work today when I was talking with a patient who had quit going to doctors out of frustration dealing with the broken Healthcare system and hadn't been told the new guidelines, so I thought I'd share here in case anyone else doesn't know:
If you're a Black American patient with Chronic Kidney Disease, you might want to verify that your eGFR levels from the past are accurate.
(Unfortunately a lot of the new guidelines rolled out during COVID¹ and might have been missed by patients and overburdened providers, but even now there's also just white doctors who may not think to mention it or who don't keep up with news they should)
Historically, lab reports here in the US used a "race multiplier" when calculating eGFR for Black patients because of some (racist bs that said Black people's kidneys "naturally functioned better") which gave higher than accurate numbers, masking early kidney damage, delaying referrals to specialists, and even worse, putting Black patients lower on kidney transplant lists.
As of late 2021/2022, most major labs and transplant centers have removed that factor and the new calculations are race-neutral, but if you were previously told your kidneys looked fine but you're experiencing symptoms, it might be worth revisiting the topic with a provider you trust. (Especially you have risk factors for kidney disease like high blood pressure, diabetes, family history.)
sources x, x
¹ speaking of COVID-era and respiratory medicine, pulse oximeters are more likely to overestimate blood oxygen levels in individuals with darker skin pigmentation. The device uses light absorption to measure oxygen, and higher melanin levels can affect the accuracy of the reading, resulting in "occult hypoxemia", which is when a patient has low oxygen saturation that isn't being detected by the monitor. This happens 3x more frequently in Black patients
