Recent professional guidelines classify the severity of chronic kidney disease in five stages, with stage 1 being the mildest and usually causing few symptoms and stage 5 being a severe illness with poor life expectancy if untreated. Stage 5 CKD is often called end stage renal disease (ESRD), end stage renal failure (ESRF), or end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) and is synonymous with the now outdated terms chronic kidney failure (CKF) or chronic renal failure (CRF).[1]