Physicians practice medicine with great sincerity. They want to help their sick patients get well and stay well, and they dole out treatments in good faith and with the best of intentions. From time to time, however, data emerge suggesting that the treatments upon which they rely are of little or no benefit.
Two articles in this issue relay new findings on one of the most pressing and controversial issues in nephrology: increasing the number of donor kidneys available for transplantation. The solution examined in each article is the use of more kidneys from expanded criteria donors (ECD).
During the past five years, the da Vinci robot has increasingly been used to perform radical prostatectomies. This robotic technology has revolutionized prostate cancer surgery.
The kidney-care community can point to more than 30 years of clinical accomplishments. In particular, the past 10 years have been marked by steady improvement in patient access to dialysis centers and improvement in clinical outcomes. Still, important challenges remain.
As patients, physicians, dialysis providers, and payers search for more favorable outcomes in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), alternative dialysis regimens have gained popularity. Among these therapies are dialysis treatments that are performed more frequently, for longer periods of time, and/or at the patient’s home.
On September 11, 2007, an FDA panel of health experts declined to recommend the quasi-expected restrictions on the use of the erythropoietin stimulating agents (ESA) in CKD patients.
Clinicians in virtually every medical and surgical specialty would have little trouble citing services for which they considered third-party reimbursement woefully inadequate for the time involved.
Urothiliasis afflicts 7%-13% of the population and has a recurrence rate of up to 50% at five years. In the United States, the economic burden of treatment and lost productivity was estimated at $2.1 billion in 2001.
While comparing summer “must read” lists, a friend suggested I pick up a copy of “Good to Great” (Jim Collins, Harper Collins 2001). My friend argued the premise of this book (that companies and indivi-duals who leap from “good to great” follow a consistent formula) has important implications in medicine.
Nephrologists and dietitians spend a significant amount of their time managing hyperphosphatemia. Phosphorus retention, which occurs in moderate to advanced CKD, is thought to contribute to secondary hyperparathyroidism and excessive vascular calcification.
