Ten tips on how to assess bone health in patients with chronic kidney disease

Abstract

Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) experience a several-fold increased risk of fracture. Despite the high incidence and the associated excess morbidity and premature mortality, bone fragility in CKD, or CKD-associated osteoporosis, remains a blind spot in nephrology with an immense treatment gap. Defining the bone phenotype is a prerequisite for the appropriate therapy of CKD-associated osteoporosis at the patient level. In the present review, we suggest ten practical ‘tips and tricks’ for the assessment of bone health in patients with CKD. We describe the clinical, biochemical, and radiological evaluation of bone health, alongside the benefits and limitations of the available diagnostics. A bone biopsy, although the gold standard for diagnosing renal bone disease, is invasive and not widely available; though useful in complex cases, we do not consider it an essential component of bone assessment in patients with CKD-associated osteoporosis. Furthermore, we advocate for the deployment of multi-disciplinary expert teams at local, national, and potentially international level. Finally, we address the knowledge gap in the diagnosis, particularly early detection, appropriate ‘real-time’ monitoring of bone health in this highly vulnerable population, and emerging diagnostic tools, currently primarily used in research, that may be on the horizon of clinical practice.