An Interactive Guide for your CKD Patient Journey
Being told you have chronic kidney disease, or sitting with someone who has just been told, can feel like arriving in a landscape where you have no familiarity of the terrain. There are new words, new numbers, a lot of appointments, and very little time in clinic to ask what any of it actually means. This interactive guide is our attempt, as fellow patients at Manchester Royal Infirmary, to put the whole journey on one page so you can explore it at your own pace.
Everyone's CKD journey is different, but having an idea of the route helps.
No two CKD journeys look quite the same.
Your starting point, the cause of your kidney disease, your age, the other conditions you live with and the choices you make with your renal team all shape where the road goes. What helps almost everyone, though, is being able to see the map.
Knowing the stages, the tests, the treatment options and the language your consultant is likely to use takes a little of the fear out of each next step.
The interactive tool below lets you walk through the CKD patient journey one decision at a time. Each node has a short medical view, written to match NHS, NICE NG203, Kidney Care UK and Kidney Research UK guidance, and a patient-voice view written by MRIKPA members who have actually been through that bit. Click any node to open it. Click back to step up a level. There is no right or wrong order and nothing is saved; you can explore as freely as you like.
If you would rather read a single long-form article instead of stepping through the tool, our patient information page covers similar ground in a more linear way. If you want to go deeper on a specific treatment, try our about dialysis page or our notes on renal care at Manchester Royal Infirmary.
Tip: the tool is built for a desktop or tablet screen.
How to use the interactive CKD journey
Start wherever feels right. If you are newly diagnosed, begin at Diagnosis and follow the path to early-stage care. If you are already on dialysis, jump straight to Kidney replacement therapy and branch into haemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis or home options. If you are thinking about transplant, open the Transplant node and read both the medical and patient views before deciding what to ask at your next appointment. Every node links out to trusted UK sources so that you can keep reading at your own pace.
