Abstract

Background: Uremic milieu associated with chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with upper gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, anorexia, and GI bleeding.
Objective: The present study intended to ascertain the prevalence of various upper GI (UGI) symptoms and UGI endoscopic abnormalities in patients of CKD.
Materials and Methods: Patients were stratified according to glomerular filtration rate and their respective GI symptoms score was determined and they were subjected to UGI endoscopy.
Results: Thirty males and 24 females of CKD were compared with equal number of control group who have normal kidney function but may or may not have UGI disturbance. The severity of CKD correlated with high GI symptom score with maximum number of patients in dialyzed CKD subgroup. Anorexia followed by nausea and abdominal pain was dominant symptoms in the study group. On endoscopic evaluation, hiatus hernia and duodenitis were significantly more prevalent in the study group over the control group.Conclusion: Based on these observations, this study supports the routine usage of UGI endoscopy in evaluation of CKD patients.