Global costs attributed to chronic kidney disease: a systematic review

The aim of this study is to discuss the global costs attributed to chronic kidney disease (CKD) and its impact on healthcare systems of developing countries, such as Brazil.

This is a systematic review based on data from PubMed/Medline, using the key words "costs" and "chronic kidney disease", in January 2017. The search was also done in other databases, such as Scielo and Google Scholar, aiming to identify regional studies related to this subject, published in journal not indexed in PubMed. Only papers published from 2012 on were included. Studies on CKD costs and treatment modalities were prioritized. The search resulted in 392 articles, from which 291 were excluded because they were related to other aspects of CKD. From the 101 remaining articles, we have excluded the reviews, comments and study protocols. A total of 37 articles were included, all focusing on global costs related to CKD.

Despite methods and analysis were diverse, the results of these studies were unanimous in alerting for the impact (financial and social) of CKD on health systems (public and private) and also on family and society.

To massively invest in prevention and measures to slow CKD progression into its end-stages and, then, avoid the requirement for dialysis and transplant, can represent a huge, and not yet calculated, economy for patients and health systems all over the world.