Dr LORNA RADFORD1, Dr KEN WANG TAT CHAU1, Dr DWARAKANATHAN RANGANATHAN1
1Kidney Health Service, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, Metro North Hospital and Health Service, Brisbane, Australia
Aim
To establish the changing epidemiology of biopsy confirmed glomerulonephritis (GN) via auditing renal biopsy activity across Metro North Hospital and Health Service from 2005-2021.
Background
Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital is the only public centre performing renal biopsies in North Brisbane and serves a population of 1,030,006. The Queensland Renal Biopsy Registry (QRBR) was established to provide details of patients with biopsy-proven kidney disease to improve disease understanding and tracking.
Methods
Pathology reports from the Pathology Queensland were reviewed between 01/01/2005 and 31/12/2021. Data was grouped by year and pathology.
Results
1433 renal biopsies were reviewed. Biopsy activity has almost doubled from 5.92 biopsies per hundred thousand people per year (php/yr) to 11.36 php/yr across the study period. There were 1039 cases of primary or secondary GN. Of the 636 primary GN, IgA nephropathy remains the most dominant pathology affecting 1.04 php/yr, followed by Crescentic GN (0.88 php/yr) and Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) (0.78 php/yr).
Regarding patterns of individual pathologies, there was an increase in membranous nephropathy (MN) incidence from 0.33 php/yr before 2014 to 0.56 php/year after 2014. An incidence increase was also observed in FSGS (0.64 php/yr to 0.94 php/yr before and after 2014).
Conclusion
Although biopsy activity in North Brisbane has steadily increased over the past 17 years, the average rate of biopsy was 9.22 php/yr as opposed to previously quoted Queensland average of 12.04 php/yr, both are significantly lower than 21.5 php/yr reported in state of Victoria. The finding of rising incidence of MN and FSGS has also been reported in Singapore and in the west. This data provides important clues for the trends in renal diagnoses in coming years.
Biography:
Bio to come