How bad is the kidney biopsy ?

[kristina]

Hello,
I have been wondering what a kidney biopsy is there for? Does it establish anything helpful for the patient? Or is it just for medical research ?
I am wondering because after my (complete) kidney failure in 1971, my kidneys slowly recovered over the next 12 months (without dialysis)
to 40% function again and the doctors decided then that my body had recovered enough for a kidney biopsy one year later in 1972.
Unfortunately my kidney continued to bleed profusely after the biopsy had been done and because of that I was transferred to an Emergency Ward.
I was later told by the medical team that I should never ever have another kidney biopsy because it would be too dangerous.
I could not really work out what that meant, but I knew that they meant what they were saying
and because of that I "stuck to it" and did not allow another kidney-biopsy ever again...
What really "got me" was the fact that this kidney-biopsy "only" provided me with the diagnosis of "Chronic Proliferative Glomerulonephritis" and that was it.
There were no suggestions of what to do medically, no suggestions were made of a possible medical treatment, no suggestions were made of anything at all...
... and I began to wonder what it was all about and what the kidney-biopsy was there for?
It did not provide me with anything at all except a name for an untreatable disease... and I came to think that is was very little for what I went through...

[Deanne]

My diagnostic biopsy many years ago caused a lot of pain for about two weeks afterward. They neph I had at the time said they must have gone through muscle. In that regard, it was awful. The neph told me the reason for it was to get a confirmed diagnosis because the diagnosis would lead them to the best treatment plan. I don't know what the treatment plans are for other diseases and if there's really much of a difference, but for me at the time, they didn't change anything. Later they had me try high-dose prednisone based on the diagnosis of FSGS because *sometimes* it can put the disease in remission or partial remission. The diagnosis also set triggers because FSGS sometimes recurs after transplant.

Post-transplant, the two "routine" biopsies I had pointed out future potential problems with my transplant. Even though my labs are good and show no sign of problems, the markers for problems are there. I know I'll always have to be extra careful and will not be able to come off prednisone as I thought I would.

[skinnacat]

i had a kidney biopsy because i was spilling so much protein  in my urine and the neph needed
to find out exactly what was causing it. and yes it was very super painful and they did not give me
enough pain medication and they couldn't get the needle through my muscle in my back. i cried
the whole way through and vowed to never do that again. i think if i would have been given the right
pain meds it would not of been so painful. i was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease...antibodys
attacking my kidney filters. and so here i am now 20 years laters.... kidney filters dont work anymore!!!!

[Simon Dog]

Correctly done, it is not that bad (been there, done that).  The capsule surrounding the needle is innervated, so you will feel it when the needle breeches that perimeter but, with adequate local anesthetic, you won't feel anything else other than the first jab when the local is stared.

There can be huge differences in comfort given the skill of the doc.  I've had 2 bone marrow biopsies.  Although both were worse than the renal core sample, there was a distinct difference in discomfort level with the doc who did the better job taking great care to make sure his fellow used enough lidocaine.

[Riki]

I've had 6 biopsies all together, 2 on my native kidneys, and 2 each on my transplanted kidneys.  The first biopsy I ever had done was by a pediatric nephrologist who was actually one of the top doctors in his field in North America (he retired last year).  He accidentally hit one of my ribs.  I was in pain for about a week after that.  He refused to do another biopsy on me, and had his partner do the second one.  These were to try to figure out what the cause of my kidney failure was, because nobody knew.  They still don't really know.  The others were done during rejection episodes, to determine the extent of the rejection.  I believe that the last one was unnecessary, because once it was all finished, they told me, for the second time, that my kidney was failing and there was little they could do to stop it.  Then they didn't understand why I wasn't upset.