July 3, 2024

Tool to assess symptoms of chronic kidney disease in children proves effective

A new multi-centre study confirms that a novel symptom assessment tool, called PRO-Kid, can accurately capture the physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in children. As a result, the tool could support communication of symptoms and decision making, like timing of dialysis initiation or kidney transplant in children, and help offer more personalized care to them and their families.

Children with CKD, many of whom are school-aged, experience unique symptoms – such as fatigue, nausea, social isolation, impaired cognitive function, and delayed growth, among others– and yet there was no pediatric CKD-specific tool to assess these symptoms in this population. Mina Matsuda-Abedini and colleagues previously developed this novel CKD-specific patient-reported outcome measure (PRO-Kid) to assess both the frequency and impact of symptoms in children. Here, they conducted a larger study among 100 children aged 8-18 years, across five sites in Canada to validate the tool. The results show that PRO-Kid can accurately and consistently capture the physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms of CKD in children. The most frequently reported severe PRO-Kid symptom was tiredness (28.5%), followed by sleep difficulties (17%) and problems with concentrating/unable to focus (15%). Feeling left out (12%) was the most frequently endorsed socioemotional symptom. In future work, the researchers plan to explore the tool’s ability to monitor changes in symptoms over time.