The Ultimate Prognosis of Nephritis

The ultimate prognosis of acute nephritis in children has always been a subject of interest to the paediatrician. The relative frequency of acute nephritis in childhood and the fact that many cases of renal failure in adult life cannot be explained, have led to repeated attempts to correlate the childhood illness with the adult renal failure. Until recent years and with traditional methods of examination these efforts have failed, but Addis (1925) gave clinicians a sign by which they can distinguish between those children who have fully recovered from acute nephritis and those who appear equally healthy, but are actually in the latent stage of nephritis, and will ultimately die of renal failure or its complications.