Clinicopathologic correlations of renal pathology in the adult population of Poland: Clinical Epidemiology in Nephrology

Background This is the first report on the epidemiology of biopsy‐proven kidney diseases in Poland. Methods The Polish Registry of Renal Biopsies has collected information on all (n = 9394) native renal biopsies performed in Poland from 2009 to 2014. Patients' clinical data collected at the time of biopsy, and histopathological diagnoses were used for epidemiological and clinicopathologic analysis. Results There was a gradual increase in the number of native renal biopsies performed per million people (PMP) per year in Poland in 2009‐14, starting from 36 PMP in 2009 to 44 PMP in 2014. A considerable variability between provinces in the mean number of biopsies performed in the period covered was found, ranging from 5 to 77 PMP/year. The most common renal biopsy diagnoses in adults were immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN) (20%), focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) (15%) and membranous glomerulonephritis (MGN) (11%), whereas in children, minimal change disease (22%), IgAN (20%) and FSGS (10%) were dominant. Due to insufficient data on the paediatric population, the clinicopathologic analysis was limited to patients ≥18 years of age. At the time of renal biopsy, the majority of adult patients presented nephrotic‐range proteinuria (45.2%), followed by urinary abnormalities (38.3%), nephritic syndrome (13.8%) and isolated haematuria (1.7%). Among nephrotic patients, primary glomerulopathies dominated (67.6% in those 18‐64 years of age and 62.4% in elderly patients) with leading diagnoses being MGN (17.1%), FSGS (16.2%) and IgAN (13.0%) in the younger cohort and MGN (23.5%), amyloidosis (18.8%) and FSGS (16.8%) in the elderly cohort. Among nephritic patients 18‐64 years of age, the majority (55.9%) suffered from primary glomerulopathies, with a predominance of IgAN (31.3%), FSGS (12.7%) and crescentic GN (CGN) (11.1%). Among elderly nephritic patients, primary and secondary glomerulopathies were equally common (41.9% each) and pauci‐immune GN (24.7%), CGN (20.4%) and IgAN (14.0%) were predominant. In both adult cohorts, urinary abnormalities were mostly related to primary glomerulopathies (66.8% in younger and 50% in elderly patients) and the leading diagnoses were IgAN (31.4%), FSGS (15.9%), lupus nephritis (10.7%) and FSGS (19.2%), MGN (15.1%) and pauci‐immune GN (12.3%), respectively. There were significant differences in clinical characteristics and renal biopsy findings between male and female adult patients. Conclusions The registry data focused new light on the epidemiology of kidney diseases in Poland. These data should be used in future follow‐up and prospective studies.