This post is somewhat basic but it’s always good to review, right?The FENa is one of the most commonly used tools by both nephrologists and non-nephrologists to assess the etiology of oliguric renal failure in a patient. Classically,…
Wilms Tumor–named after the German surgeon/pathologist Max Wilms (pictured at left)–is an embryonal tumor that derives from developing kidney tissue. Wilms was the first to postulate that tumors may arise from precursor cells which arise during development, and…
The presence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) portends a much higher mortality in patients who suffer an acute myocardial infarction. There are several potential reasons as to why this might be the case–for instance, the treatment of resultant…
So it was my Dad’s 65th birthday this past weekend, and the kids & grandkids all flew in to Indianapolis to help him celebrate. As my father is also a nephrologist, I wanted there to be a kidney…
Currently, the most widely-utilized method for routine estimation of GFR (eGFR) is the 4-variable MDRD Equation, in which serum creatinine, age, gender and race are the variables entered into a mathematical formula. eGFR as determined by the MDRD…
Often, my ideas for blog postings come from reputable journals such as JASN, CJASN, AJKD, Kidney International, NEJM, etc… But today’s topic derives from my regular reading a website I simply can’t recommend highly enough…Geekologie. From the July…
Another potentially useful drug to prevent cyst growth in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease comes from the interesting observation that kidney transplant patients with native ADPKD kidneys who were given an immunosuppressant regimen containing the drug rapamycin (sirolimus)…
The case against Sunday As A Day Of Rest For the Dialysis Unit: this older study (Bleyer et al, Kidney International 1999) looked at sudden death amongst ESRD patients according to days of the week using data from…
The MRI above depicts a classic example of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES), sometimes also called reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy, an increasingly-recognized consequence of malignant hypertension. The whitish areas (“hyper-intense signal”) in the bilateral occipital and parietal lobes represent…
How many nephrologists does the U.S. need? I recently heard a thought-provoking calculation from MGH’s Dr. David Steele which helps illustrate a likely shortage in the number of American nephrologists. The calculation is admittedly a rough estimate, but…
