INFORMATION FOR WOMEN WHO HAVE KIDNEY FAILURE DURING PREGNANCY OR BREASTFEEDING

What is kidney failure during pregnancy?

Kidney failure, also known as end-stage renal disease (ESRD), is a situation in which your kidneys are not functioning well enough to keep you alive without kidney dialysis or kidney transplantation. Kidney failure is the final stage (called stage 5) of what doctors call chronic kidney disease (CKD). As with most serious medical conditions, CKD affects pregnancy because it harms the body, and pregnancy affects CKD by putting increased demands on internal organs as pregnancy advances. Furthermore, CKD interferes with the ability to get pregnant in the first place. Whether or not you are pregnant, kidney failure also can occur as an acute condition, a condition that comes on suddenly, due to sudden damage to the kidneys, a reduction of blood flow to the kidneys, or blockage of the drainage system of urine. With CKD, there is a spectrum of severity; the worse the CKD, the harder it is to get pregnant, and the worse the effects on pregnancy if you do get pregnant. If you have ESRD, the chances of having a successful pregnancy are very low, but there have been cases of women delivering babies while on dialysis, or subsequent to receiving a kidney transplant.