A recent review in this month’s AJKD by Perl and Bargman describes the increasingly recognized importance of residual renal function in dialysis patients’ prognoses. Although the benefits of residual renal function are most obvious in patients undergoing peritoneal…
This is an interesting figure, taken from the 2008 USRDS (United States Renal Disease System) Atlas, which illustrates where patients in the U.S. are getting their dialysis from these days. Nearly 63% of all patients are getting dialysis…
HMG coA-reductase inhibitors (a.k.a. “statins”) are one of the most successful drugs in recent history…one does not have to look far to find good, solid randomized, controlled trials touting the benefits of statin therapy in any number of…
This morning’s Renal Grand Rounds was an interesting talk given by Edmund Lowrie, a nephrologist currently employed by Fresenius Dialysis who has been studying measurements of dialysis adequacy for several decades. In his talk, he made the case…
Recent review in the latest issue of Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology entitled “Skin problems in chronic kidney disease.” They tackle the usual suspects (calciphylaxis, nephrogenic systemic fibrosis) as well as some lesser-known dermatologic conditions which appear with a…
In the most recent issue of C-JASN there is an intriguing article entitled “Ethical and Legal Obligation To Avoid Long-Term Tunneled Catheter Access” by Rehman et al, in which the authors argue strongly that tunneled catheters should be…
Did you know that a full 20% of all dialysis patient deaths are due to the patient voluntarily withdrawing from dialysis? I’ve heard this statistic several times now and it never ceases to surprise me–this seems a bit…
I heard a talk today by one of the fellows in our program who is also the senior author on this recent JASN article: Phosphorus Binders and Survival on Dialysis. Interestingly, even though the current KDOQI Guidelines recommend…
In the U.S., erythropoietin is typically delivered as 3x/week intravenous injections in the ESRD population. This turns out to be a fairly significant cost, as Medicare-related payments for EPO comprise about 25% of the ESRD budget, which itself…
Cardiovascular mortality in the general ESRD population is between 10- and 20-fold higher than that of the general population, and is an astounding 65-fold higher in ESRD individuals in the 45-54-year-old subgroup of the Framingham study. A recent…
