Back to: Develop Your Research Question

You want to be sure your language is as specific as possible when you describe the disease/condition in your question.

You might think the term “kidney disease” is fairly specific, but medical experts define five different stages of kidney disease and recommend different types of treatments depending on what stage the patient is in. So the proper treatment will depend on how advanced the patient’s disease is.

Not that kind of kidney!

Also, some of these stages have both technical and colloquial names of their own. For example, the last stage of kidney disease, when a patient needs a kidney transplant or has to go on dialysis, can be called “Stage 5 Chronic Kidney Disease”, “End Stage Renal Disease” or “Kidney Failure.” It’s also sometimes called “End Stage Kidney Disease.”

If you were actually conducting a systematic review, you’d spend some time researching how these terms are used and then compare them to your particular need. For this course, to keep it simple, just use the term “Stage 5 Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).”

Now the question looks like this:

You’re almost done describing the population in your question. Just one last thing to consider: how are you identifying people with kidney disease? We’ll talk about that on the next page.