Background Patients with diabetic or hypertensive kidney disease rarely undergo kidney
biopsy because nephrologists commonly believe that biopsy-related risk outweighs the
potential benefits of obtaining histologic information to guide clinical decisions. Although
kidney function is acutely regulated, histologic changes such as interstitial fibrosis, tubular
atrophy, and glomerulosclerosis may represent chronic kidney damage, and thus might
provide additional information about disease severity. However, whether histologic analysis …