Almost every transplant clinic I have, one of my patients will ask about reducing his or her immunosuppression. This happened again this week. Needless to say that this is one of the most frustrating area in transplantation where…
I recently saw a patient in clinic who has type I diabetes and received a kidney transplant from a sibling ~15 yrs ago. His allograft function remains excellent, but recently his diabetic control has been more difficult, despite…
The interest in machine perfusion for preservation of kidney transplants has been revived. Were we serious when we decided to put the organ in ice??? A recent NEJM prospective, controlled trial randomizing 336 consecutive deceased donors to either…
I have just learned two very interesting aspects of kidney donation that I would like to share with you. As part of my transplant fellowship, I am required to participate in the decisions about accepting or not a…
Talking to Nate always stimulated new ideas and new challenges. Last time I met him, we played soccer in the park with the kids (that was also a challenge but fun and easy to win…). We also talked…
Meet Jennifer Harman. She is apparently one of the most famous female professional poker players in the world, having done quite well at the prestigious “World Series of Poker” tournament. It turns out she is also a kidney…
As much as kidney transplant outcomes have improved over the decades, we’re not perfect: a sizable group of patients end up transitioning to dialysis therapies after the kidney transplant stops working. What should be done with the allograft…
You may have come across the phrase “Luminex beads” while doing your transplant nephrology rotation, or heard the term while hanging out in the Tissue Typing Lab. This post is intended to briefly describe the Luminex technology and…
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…
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,…
