New Tool to Help People with Kidney Disease Track their Symptoms More Easily

An academic at the University of Worcester has led the development of a new tool for people with chronic kidney disease.

With support from a Kidney Research UK-Stoneygate research project grant, a team of researchers, led by Derek Kyte, Professor of Physiotherapy at the University of Worcester, has developed a new questionnaire that aims to help people report their symptoms more easily and effectively.

For people living with chronic kidney disease (CKD), symptoms can vary widely and change over time. Regularly tracking these symptoms helps patients better understand their condition and communicate more effectively with healthcare professionals. This can lead to earlier interventions, improved quality of life, and more personalised care that focuses on what matters most to each individual.

Professor Kyte said: “We want to support healthcare professionals and patients in the management of symptoms that impact them the most so that we can better understand and target care. This questionnaire provides a simple way of measuring patient symptoms for short-term and long-term use, across any stage of a patient’s journey.

“We are now beginning phase 2 of the project to further refine this tool digitally, with the hope to reach the clinic in the future.”

The current monitoring of symptoms is gathered through questionnaires called Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs). However, this requires the completion of multiple and often lengthy questionnaires which may lead to lower levels of completion.

Additionally, many CKD-specific PROMs lack coverage of symptoms that are most important and problematic for patients and are not accessible for adults across different CKD stages.

Professor Kyte and a team of researchers across the UK and EU reviewed symptom and quality of life data from almost 200,000 patients globally, to explore how this information might help support patient management. They used this knowledge to develop and test a shorter PROM called the Kidney Symptom Burden Questionnaire (KSB-Q).

The KSB-Q has 9 questions designed to capture the most common and burdensome symptoms experienced by people with CKD, including those not on dialysis, those receiving dialysis, and kidney transplant recipients. It takes around 5 minutes to complete, was tested in over 400 people living with CKD for use across diverse CKD populations and is designed for both care and research settings.

Tracey Murray, Director of Programmes at Kidney Research UK, said: “We are keen to see this research progress and be used to support a more equitable approach to care, ensuring tools like this are effective and inclusive for patients from all backgrounds, especially those underrepresented in healthcare.”