Kidney Disease Treatment Options

If you have kidney disease, our team will work with you on a treatment path that best meets your needs. We provide expert care for a wide range of kidney diseases to help improve your quality of life.

At the UPMC Kidney Disease Center, our goal is to find a reversible cause of your kidney disease. Once we learn the cause, we can provide the most effective treatment.

Medicine to Treat Kidney Disease

Medicine can help relieve symptoms and slow the progression of your illness.

Your treatment will depend on your specific disease, but common medical treatments include:

• Drugs to control blood pressure.
• Medicines to improve or stabilize kidney function.
• Drugs that lower your cholesterol.
• Supplements for iron or Vitamin D.
• Your care team may also offer nutrition guidance to help you change your diet.

Dialysis Treatments

If you progress to kidney failure, you may need to look into other treatments.

Dialysis — or renal replacement therapy — takes over for your failing kidneys by cleaning waste from your blood.

We partner with many dialysis clinics in the Pittsburgh region to provide you with this service. We can also help you prepare for dialysis at home.

But this is just one treatment option for renal replacement therapy. Another important option is kidney transplantation.

Renal Supportive Care

Living with kidney disease can be challenging for patients and families. For many, dialysis treatment is lifesaving. But it's also sometimes painful and time consuming.

So, the experts at the UPMC Kidney Disease Center offer a treatment option called renal supportive care.

It offers two different kinds of kidney disease care:

• Conservative management. A method for treating your condition without dialysis or kidney transplant. Your doctor focuses on improving your quality of life and treating your symptoms. Conservative management is important for those who can't have dialysis treatments. And it may be right for some who can.
• Palliative care. Specialized care that focuses on improving your quality of life, treating your symptoms, and advance care planning. Palliative care is appropriate for any patient with kidney disease. Like dialysis, we use palliative care as a bridge to kidney transplant.

Our experts at the UPMC Renal Supportive Care Clinic are leaders in this treatment option.

Kidney Transplant

For people who end up in kidney failure, our experts can assess you for kidney transplant. We partner with the world-renowned Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute to provide this service.

Our experts will guide you through each step of the process, supporting you through your assessment, surgery, and recovery.

Contact the UPMC Kidney Disease Center

To learn more about treatment for kidney disease at UPMC:

• Book an appointment or video visit.
• Call the UPMC Kidney Disease Center at 412-802-3043.