The normalized protein catabolic rate (nPCR) is a formula commonly used to assess dietary protein intake in dialysis patients, as a means towards determining nutritional adequacy, a major problem in many ESRD patients. For example, say you have…
Although the complement cascade is an essential aspect of the response to infection, it unfortunately can be activated by a variety of means in several types of kidney disease. In common day clinical practice, most of the time…
Although the majority of membranous nephropathy falls under the “idiopathic” category, there are a variety of causes of secondary membranous nephropathy. It is quite important to eliminate these entities as possible diagnoses, as the treatment for secondary membranous…
The results from last week’s Poll of the Week are in, and in general, a majority of individuals (64%) felt that their training programs did a good job of teaching them the art of the renal biopsy, while…
We are taught that water is freely diffusable via cell membranes–even in the absence of aquaporin function, there are usually some water molecules which traverse the lipid bilayer. However, there are tissues within the human body which must…
Back from the 2009 ASN Meeting in San Diego! I’ll admit to a few lapses in blogging, but the meeting kept me pretty busy. Thanks to everybody who stopped by the Renal Fellow Network poster and their encouraging…
Renal Fellow Network is taking its show on the road…to the ASN meeting in San Diego, CA! I’m presenting a “Renal Fellow Network” poster at the poster session on Saturday, 10/31 (SA-PO2863) if anybody would like to…
Though this is to some degree controversial, volume expansion with normal saline has been associated with the development of a hyperchloremic, non-anion gap metabolic acidosis. What are the mechanisms associated with saline expansion-induced metabolic acidosis? The rationale for…
Get your flu shots, everyone! Renal Fellow Network recently had to take an H1N1-sponsored weekend off, and I strongly suggest getting the vaccine if available to you; this bug is no fun at all. I’ve written about the…
Final results of last week’s Renal Fellow Network poll: There seemed to be general agreement that volume expansion with isotonic saline is definitely effective, and many individuals also selected the isotonic saline + N-acetylcysteine combination. Interestingly, only 23%…
