Clinical features and prognosis of adult polycystic kidney disease

To appraise the prognosis of adult polycystic kidney disease (APKD), 107 patients (58 male and 49 female) were studied retrospectively. The mean age at the time of diagnosis was 45.9 years (ages ranging from 18 to 83 years). Ninety-eight patients had symptomatic APKD. At diagnosis, 30 of these patients had normal renal function, and 68 presented with chronic renal failure (serum creatinine higher than 1.5 mg/dl). Nine of the 107 patients were asymptomatic. Hypertension was the most common feature in symptomatic APKD, present in 51% of these patients as initial manifestation, and was observed in 46% of the patients with normal renal function. Forty of the 107 patients (37%) went into end-stage renal disease (ESRD) at a mean age of 52.7 years. The probability of being alive and not having ESRD, estimated using a time-to-event analysis, was 74% by the age of 50, 51% by the age of 58 and 37% by the age of 70 years. Thus, the prognosis for patients with APKD is better than some reports suggested some years ago.