Symptomatic therapy

Patients with glomerular diseases develop a wide variety of biochemical disturbances and pathophysiologic alterations leading to overt clinical manifestations. Collectively, these abnormalities give rise to the classical syndromes of glomerular disease. The clinical abnormalities resulting from these disturbances in renal pathophysiology require management in order to minimize or avoid disabling symptoms, often referred to as symptomatic therapy. This chapter provides an introduction to and overview of these abnormalities. It then covers therapies for a variety of manifestations of primary glomerular diseases, including haematuria, oedema, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia (e.g. hypercholesterolaemia), the ‘hypercoagulable’ or ‘thrombophilic’ state, non-disease-specific strategies designed to retard the progression of renal disease (loss of glomerular filtration rate, GFR), and more.