What is congenital polycystic kidney?

  Congenital polycystic kidney is an inherited disease involving both kidneys and is the most common congenital inherited cystic kidney disease in humans. Statistics show that the prevalence of congenital polycystic kidney is up to 1/1000 or more, while the common prevalence is between 1/400 and 1/1000.  There are generally two types. One is infantile type, which is due to chromosomal recessive inheritance. Infantile congenital polycystic kidney patients often have other congenital anomalies and die within a few months after birth; the other type is adult type, which is due to chromosomal dominant inheritance. Adult congenital polycystic kidney patients are often associated with polycystic lesions in the liver, spleen, pancreas, ovaries, bone and other organs, as well as intracranial aneurysms, and most of them start to develop in middle age.  The compensatory function of kidney is very strong, so when initially disturbed by external factors such as cysts or some inflammation, the symptoms are often not very obvious and will not affect life, work and study greatly. In congenital polycystic kidney, the whole kidney can be full of large and small cysts, and these cysts will gradually grow with age. Over the years, the kidney volume increases, the kidney parenchyma is compressed, the kidney atrophy, the kidney function is damaged, the number of kidney units that can produce urine is greatly reduced, and the kidney slowly loses its role in maintaining normal life functions, which eventually leads to chronic renal failure and uremia.  In most cases, the kidney size grows to a considerable extent at the age of 40 to 50 years before symptoms appear. The main manifestations are enlarged kidneys on both sides, pain in kidney area, hematuria and hypertension, etc. Sometimes, urinary tract infection or kidney stone may also appear. 50% of congenital polycystic kidney patients over 60 years old may enter the stage of end-stage renal failure.