In 2021, the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) and American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Task Force on Reassessing the Inclusion of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Disease called for the discontinuation of race-based GFR estimation in the United States, and issued recommendations for immediate implementation of the 2021 race-free CKD-EPI creatinine equation, and increased use of cystatin C. In response, the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) published a position statement in 2022 expressing concern about the accuracy of the 2021 race-free CKD-EPI creatinine equation in European populations, and recommended that European laboratories keep utilizing the 2009 CKD-EPI creatinine equation without using the race correction factor, along with reconsideration of other GFR estimating equations such as the Revised Lund-Malmo equation or the European Kidney Function Consortium (EKFC) equation. These recent developments raise questions about the global applicability of the new race-free CKD-EPI creatinine equations and NKF/ASN recommendations, as well as questions as to whether global consensus on a single standardized GFR estimation approach is an achievable goal.

For this webinar, the IFCC Committee on Kidney Diseases (C-KD) invited a group of experts from the US, Europe and South America, to share their current practices for GFR estimation, their insights into race correction coefficients, and their thoughts on the future of GFR estimation and measurement.