Health care is funding a new kidney treatment that delays dialysis from 3 to 13 years.

This Wednesday, the Ministry of Health approved funding for a new treatment for adult patients with chronic kidney disease, which has been proven to reduce the risk of disease progression, hospitalization and even delayed dialysis for three to 13 years.

The new therapeutic option, presented at a press conference by the Boehringer Ingelheim and Lilly Alliance and on sale from this Wednesday, will mean a benefit in Spain for the six million people potentially affected by the disease, since two out of three are not diagnosed as a “silent disease” which in the initial stages is asymptomatic.

At a press conference, the head of the nephrology service at the University Teaching Hospital of Valencia, José Luis Gorriz, explained that treatment with empaglifosin, a molecule that was until now available to patients with type 2 diabetes, can now be prescribed to people with the disease. chronic kidney disease without diabetes, as soon as its clinical situation is proven to improve significantly.

“In Spain, there are twice as many people with chronic diseases as there are unemployed,” emphasized this expert, who focused on early diagnosis, since it is a pathology “that affects every seventh person, 15% of the population, and will be the leading cause of death in end of the century.

In Spain, treatment of the most advanced stages of chronic kidney disease accounts for 3% of public health expenditure and 4% of hospital care.

Gorris insisted on early detection to reduce the risk of worsening or failure of kidney function and hospitalization, and lamented that most cases today are detected in emergencies.

For her part, the head of the department of family and community medicine, Flora Lopez, explained that to diagnose the disease in primary care, it is necessary to carry out a blood test that checks the efficiency with which the kidneys filter the blood, and another urine test. which measures the presence of albumin and creatinine. This primary health care expert suggested screening for this chronic disease would be targeted mainly at the diabetic population and people over 65 years of age, since actual function is lost with age and an estimated 33% of people This age group suffers from it.

Another group that should undergo screening tests would be patients with hypertension and patients with cardiovascular disease. According to this specialist, there is a very close connection between the heart and the kidneys, “and when one of these organs becomes ill, the other becomes ill with a delay of less than two years.”

Fortunately, he commented, “80% of patients with chronic kidney disease are in the early stages and are in primary care, so there is an opportunity to provide treatment before the disease progresses.”