Other causes
Ultimately, there are numerous causes for kidney pain. Among the most common are:About 4% of the population suffer from kidney stones, with the frequency increasing rapidly with age. In many patients, they do not cause any discomfort and are discovered by chance during routine examinations.
However, if the stone gets stuck in the left ureter (lat. : ureter), patients experience severe pain in the area of the left kidney. But how do kidney stones develop?
Individual components of the urine (including calcium salts and uric acid) can precipitate to crystalline stones of different sizes when the composition of the urine changes. Patients with untreated gout, for example, are particularly affected! Often the kidney stones are only 1-3 millimeters in size, but in severe cases they can grow to several centimeters.
Depending on the exact location in the kidney, the symptoms vary. In addition to strong, colicky pain, bloody urine can often be observed. The main cause of inflammation of the renal pelvis (Latin: pyelonephritis) is “ascending” infection of the urinary tract, e.g. cystitis.
This is how bacteria (especially E. coli), very rarely fungi, reach the kidney via the ureters and cause the painful inflammation there. Usually the disease occurs unilaterally, e.g. on the left side. Sudden symptoms, severe pain in the affected kidney, fever, chills and a violent feeling of illness are the typical symptoms.
Therefore, even a simple cystitis should always be taken seriously and treated without fail, otherwise there is a risk of a much more problematic inflammation of the renal pelvis.In the worst case a life-threatening blood poisoning can occur, starting from the kidney (lat. : urosepsis). The first symptoms can be a noticeable increase in the heart rate (tachycardia), as well as high blood pressure.
Far less frequently than pelvic inflammation or kidney stones, polycystic kidney disease can be the cause of left-sided kidney pain. In this genetically determined disease, fluid-filled cysts develop in the area of the kidneys, rarely also in other organs. A distinction is made between a dominantly inherited variant, which occurs relatively frequently at 1:1000, and a recessively inherited variant, with a frequency of less than 1:10.
000. While the first form of the disease can usually only be observed between the 2nd and 3rd decade of life, newborns already suffer from the recessively inherited form. In addition to severe kidney pain, usually one-sided at the beginning, patients frequently report high blood pressure, recurrent cystitis, bloody urine and kidney stones. About half of those affected reach chronic renal insufficiency (“kidney failure”) by the age of 50 and must therefore regularly go for dialysis, popularly known as blood washing.
