Anti-Nephrin Antibodies in Minimal Change Disease
Approach to the Patient with Peritoneal Dialysis Catheter Dysfunction- Part 1
Want to write a case report? RFN has you covered with a list of journals to choose from
Have a Nephrology Question? There Might Be A #Tweetorial For That!
Conferences, Courses, & Grants
FOAMed
Interventional Nephrology Series
Focus on Point-of-Care Ultrasound in Nephrology (POCUN) Series
Kidney Biopsy of the Month Series
Calculating Total Body Water
The easy way to calculate total body water is simply to multiply 0.6 times your weight in kilograms, since roughly 2/3 of your body weight is water. There are fancier (and more accurate) equation-based calculations used to determine…
Personalized Medicine for Kidney Disease?
Interesting review in this month’s CJASN: “Can we personalize treatment for kidney diseases?” by Rovin et al. The term “personalized medicine” has been defined by the U.S. Congress as, “the application of genomic and molecular data to…
Telomeres, Renal Cell Carcinoma, and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine
The winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine were revealed today, shared by three Americans: Carol Greider, Elisabeth Blackburn, and Jack Szostak, the latter of whom works at my home institution of Massachusetts General Hospital. The award…
Is cystatin C the next creatinine?
As we all know, there are significant limitations to the use of creatinine as an estimate of GFR. Creatinine is freely filtered at the glomerulus, but in addition is also secreted to some degree, meaning that creatinine clearance…
Evidence-Based Medicine versus Statin Use in ESRD Patients
It can often be difficult to stop something once it’s been started; take statins for example. It seems that despite consistent evidence from two large, randomized controlled trails demonstrating the lack efficacy of statins for preventing cardiovascular mortality…
The Trials and Tribulations of the Renal Fellow
The readers of the Renal Fellow Network have spoken, and the answer is clear: the most blood pressure elevating activity is catheter-related! 29% of fellows selected the first answer (the MICU nurse paging you to inform that your…
A sweet alternative to kayexelate?
Trust the Swiss to approach a problem from a confectioners viewpoint. The options for managing hyperkalemia in dialysis patients have always been limited and unpalatable, but this preliminary clinical study from Berne provides some hope. It suggests that…
Bone Scan for Diagnosis of Calciphylaxis?
Calciphylaxis (also called calcific uremic arteriolopathy) is a syndrome of vascular calcification, thrombosis, and necrosis, occurring almost exclusively in ESRD patients. The diagnosis is typically achieved by clinical exam–demonstrating painful, necrotic, and sometimes ulcerating lesions usually on the…
The Proteinuria Controversy
One of the largest controversies in the field of proteinuria/nephrotic syndrome research derives from a 2007 Kidney International paper published by Russo et al. Briefly stated, the authors suggest the paradigm-shifting idea that the glomerulus filters massive amounts…
The Kidneys as Food
The French, renowned for their culinary excellence, pride themselves on being able to include every part of the cow in a tasty dish. Regrettably, this includes finding uses for the many internal organs, one of the more challenging…