Although it is difficult to provide exact number, there are approximately 11 million illegal immigrants residing within the United States. Many of these individuals come from Mexico and other Latin American countries; since there appears to be a…
One of the challenges of taking care of your ESRD patients on the kidney transplant list is deciding on what kind of cardiovascular workup to perform. For obvious reasons, you don’t want to be performing a major abdominal…
The Poll Results from last week were relatively convincing: Up To Date is the most commonly used current reference system for rapidly obtaining nephrology knowledge, with 67% of respondents declaring Up To Date as their top source. I…
Although it’s not common (somewhere between 0.5 – 0.9% of all native kidney biopsies according to published case series), one of the fellows produced an interesting case of granulomatous interstitial nephritis in Renal Grand Rounds today. The case,…
Cardiovascular complications are the major cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with CKD and ESRD. Although myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death get a lot of attention, stroke is also extremely important in this population. How should…
Cancer-associated hypercalcemia is the #1 cause for hypercalcemia in the inpatient setting (in the outpatient setting, the main cause is primary hyperparathyroidism). In general, hypercalcemia of malignancy portends a poor prognosis, and there are three main mechanisms by…
Poll results: the most appealing Nephrology Consult scenario chosen, perhaps not surprisingly, was workup of new-onset glomerulonephritis (44%). I would contend that many individuals choose Nephrology because they are interested in issues such as glomerulonephritis, interesting electrolyte and…
Why do we care about hypomagnesemia? And why are cardiologists so eager to replete the serum magnesium above 2.0 mg/dL? Very low serum Mg can result in serious cardiovascular and CNS effects. Specifically, hypomagnesemia can cause QRS widening…
Concerning the basics of PD prescription writing–and only the basics, since there’s lots to say about this interesting topic–the minimum prescription should specify the following: 1. What kind of PD does the patient use: for the most part,…
I stumbled across a bit of Nephrology/Urology history the other day while strolling around a hospital in Paris: this plaque commemorating one of the key steps in the invention of ureteroscopy and cystoscopy. The plaque can be found…
