The current diagnostic criteria for chronic kidney disease(CKD) has ignored the particularity of the aged in many aspects. On the assessment of renal function, serum creatinine is affected by many factors, such as the amount of muscle, diet, and so on. Thus all of the creatine-based glomerular filtration rate(GFR) estimations are prone to bias, especially for the elderly. Recently, it has been observed that Cys C may be a more precise endogenous maker of GFR, for it is affected by less factors. On the staging of CKD, one of the major problems is overdiagnosis of old people. It is suggested that stage 1 and 2 should be eliminated and stage 3 needs to be further splited into two parts. However, these considerations remain controversial. Besides, to improve the prognosis evaluation of CKD, it is necessary to combine albuminuria and GFR together to estimate the progression of end-stage renal disease and the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.