The Association of Renal Cortical Echogenicity and Length with Serum Creatinine in Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Background: The prevalence of chronic kidney disease is 21.2% in Pakistan and rising due to increasing prevalence of diabetes. Ultrasonography is effective tool in early detection and diagnosis of impaired renal function along with renal function tests. Objective: To study the correlation of serum creatinine with renal echogenicity grading and renal length in patients with chronic kidney disease. Methods: This prospective cross sectional study was conducted at Medicine, Nephrology and Radiology departments of Pakistan Railway General Hospital, Rawalpindi from 30th September 2021 to 15th July 2022. A total of 200 patients with chronic kidney disease were enrolled randomly by consecutive non probability sampling from medical and nephrology in and out patients after fulfilling inclusion and exclusion criteria per study design. After history, physical examination of serum creatinine was done and the patient was sent for ultrasound in the radiology department. Demographic data and study data was entered on pre designed proforma and analyzed using SPSS21. Results: Mean age of the patients was 53.45 +/- 8.93 years. There were 110 male and 90 female patients in our study. Mean renal length was 9.55 cm. Mean serum creatinine was 1.921 mg/dl with grade 1 cortical echogenicity, 3.561 with grade 2, 4.267 with grade 3 and 6.001 with grade 4 echogenicity respectively on ultrasound. A negative correlation (r= -0.144) was present between renal length and serum creatinine. Conclusion: Renal cortical echogenicity is a valuable sonographic parameter and is found to be significantly related to serum creatinine level in chronic kidney disease. While renal length showed weaker association with serum creatinine levels.