Medicine: kidney recovery?

[Kaijima]

An odd thing to ask about, but there is a wide variety of scientific knowledge among the members here. So...

A friend and I are investigating his own history with kidney damage. Short story: he was born with some sort of birth defect rendering each kidney 40 percent operational. It was this way his entire life until around age 19. In the space of a year, his doctor said that his kidneys recovered apparently, each reaching 100 percent capacity.

My question is, are the kidneys known to be a human organ that can sometimes make such recoveries without medical intervention?

 

[Elemental]

I'm a physician and it really depends on the nature of the damage. There are many forms of kidney disease. It's like asking a garage if your car is repairable without them knowing what the problem is.

As a general answer though, the human body is very good at compensating for stresses that are put on it and even moreso in childhood than as an adult, so sure, it sounds within the range of possibility to me. This is the same reason for why a stroke victim can regain some abilities over time or a heart attack victim begins to gain their activity tolerance back. The damage was done and things may not be functioning in quite the same way they were before but compensations have been made. If only we could develop technology as malleable as the human body is.

 

[Kaijima]

Thanks for a reply. I'm sorry I can't provide specifics yet - it's a curiosity my friend is going to look into more in the near future.

 

[Zachary Smith]

Another question to be considered is whether the initial diagnosis of "some kind of birth defect" and the estimation of his kidneys functioning at "40% capacity" was accurate to begin with.