Kidney disease: Scottish data

Acute kidney injury (AKI)

There are no nationally reported routine data on AKI incidence, prevalence or mortality in Scotland.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD)

Incidence

There are no nationally reported data on CKD incidence in Scotland.

Prevalence

Based on historic data from the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), there were 179,850 patients aged 18 and over recorded with CKD (stage 3-5) in 2015-2016 in Scotland, a crude prevalence rate of 3.19 per 100 registered population. NHS board, CHP and practice level data are available from the QOF section of the PHS website for financial years up to 2015/16. Disease prevalence data from the QOF calculator (including the prevalence of CKD) is also available for a limited number of practices for the period April 2017 to April 2019. Based on this source, in 2018/19 the prevalence of CKD in Scotland was 3.08 per 100 registered population.

CKD prevalence has been reported for a single health board region (Robertson et al. 2014). Based on biochemistry data, in 2003, 4.3% of the adult Grampian population had CKD stages 3-5. Another study found that in Ayrshire and Arran 5.6-5.8% of adults had CKD between 2009 and 2012 (So et al. 2015, Gifford et al. 2011)

Mortality

There are no national data on mortality caused by CKD. CKD mortality has been reported for a single health board region as part of the Grampian based GLOMMS-1 study (Marks et al. 2013). The overall crude all-cause mortality rate in this study was 15.8 per 100 patient-years. Directly standardised for age and sex (using the Grampian population), all-cause mortality was 5.5 per 100 patient-years, 4.7 (95% CI 4.5–4.9) times higher than the general population.

Renal replacement therapy (RRT)

Data on renal replacement therapy (RRT) are collected by the Scottish Renal Registry and published in their annual reports. The following information comes from the most recently available 2023 report (covering 2022 data).

Incidence

In 2022, 543 (11 per 100,000 population) started RRT for established renal failure. The incidence of new patients starting RRT in 2022 was highest in those aged 65-74 years. The median age of patients starting RRT in 2022 across Scotland was 61 years. For the period 2014-22 the most common reason for starting RRT was diabetes. 

Prevalence

On 31 December 2022 there were 5,601 patients receiving RRT. The age group with the highest  prevalence receiving RRT was those aged 65-74 years (215.6 per 100,000 population).

Kidney transplant

247 patients resident in Scotland received a kidney transplant in Scotland in 2022. Of these, 46 (19%) were pre-emptive, meaning they were performed before the patient had required any other form of RRT. In 2022 37% of kidney transplants were from live kidney donors.

Mortality and survival

There has been a trend of improving survival for patients starting RRT. For example, 71.9% of patients starting RRT in 2009 survived 1 year, compared to 87.5% of patients starting RRT in 2021. However, the life expectancy of patients receiving RRT is shorter than that of the general population. The survival of patients is influenced by their age at the time of starting RRT, their primary renal diagnosis and by their level of social deprivation.  

First kidney transplants performed in 2017 had a 97% 1 year graft survival (the transplanted kidney survived at least one year) and a 99% 1 year patient survival.

Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.