Interventional Nephrology

Interventional Nephrology is an emerging field dealing primarily with the vascular and peritoneal access for dialysis dependent end-stage renal disease patients. At the inception of dialysis more than 30 years ago, nephrologists inserted peritoneal dialysis catheters on their patients and often also created vascular access. They were also responsible for declotting Quinton-Scribner shunts, the only vascular acess available in those days. Over the years, however, these functions were passed on to surgeons. With increasing number of people on dialysis and a shift in demographics, including people who are much older and more ill with significant vascular disease, vascular access problems have become extremely common. The surgical services have been unable to keep pace with the increasing need and urgency of establishing, maintaining, and declotting vascular access. Vascular access is the lifeline of dialysis patients. Therefore, it is extremely important to maintain vascular access in top functional shape at all times. This means perfomring declotting and/or angioplasty promptly when the problems arise in vascular access. There is no one better than the nephrologist to understand the magnitude and seriousness of this problem, and to tackle it effectively and promptly.

Our interventional nephrology section currently offers the following services to our dialysis patients:

Link:
American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Nephrology