A pinch of salt - A podcast by ERA

A Pinch of Salt today set sail very far away! We went to the other side of the Atlantic ocean, transversed a few thousand km or miles of land and finally got to Katherine Tuttle, from Washington USA, an eminent specialist on translational medicine who will « unconfuse » us on the « new drugs in nephrology » a series of innovative treatments or indications for currently existing ones. We‘ll talk about SGLT2 inhibitors, Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists and many more! Because that's the objective of A Pinch of Salt! We are looking for common-sense answers to difficult clinically relevant questions. Our basic mission is to ask the questions a young nephrologist would want to ask at the ERA Congress but doesn’t have the guts to do so out of fear of appearing a simpleton. We firmly believe that the so-called “simple questions” may be the most important ones and are too rarely asked and answered. So join us for this most exciting exchange with an eminent specialist in the field.

Dialysis saves lives. But only if you can do it and do it well. Enter dialysis access. There is no dialysis without dialysis access. Whose job is it to take care of this vital, crucial part of dialysis? Is it OK to leave this to physicians for whom dialysis is not foremost in their minds? Or should it be the other way around? Should nephrologists become part-time surgeons? If you’re thinking about these things and particularly if you are harbouring a hidden desire to do some surgical stuff on top of being a brainiac day in and day out, then you simply must listen to the podcast that we did with Jernej Pajek, a well-known expert in the field of dialysis access, entitled – How to start a career in dialysis access.

How many times per day during your dialysis rounds do you find the personnel a bit stressed near a patient suffering from an episode of intradialytic hypotension?

And they are actually looking at you for the magic solution!

A lot of things are simultaneously passing from your mind but sometimes you are not absolutely sure if you are doing the right thing…

Despite the giant leaps of Nephrology in recent decades, intradialytic hypotension is still an important problem of daily practice affecting about 20% of hemodialysis patients. 

We feel that this is bad for the patients but we are not sure whether our acts and decisions are validated, whether they are the right ones.

So we’ll try to explore the options available with a world leader on the subject, Andrew Davenport from the University College of London, United Kingdom.

Do you want to know the name of the magic treatment?

A treatment that improves the endurance and the force of the patients ? A treatment that makes them feel better and less tired? A treatment that improves their autonomy, their capacities for the daily tasks and their quality of life?

A treatment that improves the blood pressure control, the lipid and metabolic profile? And all that for free? Without pills?

Do you want to know the name of this treatment? Come closer, I ‘ll share with you the secret! It is the physical activity!!!

In this podcast we’ll discuss physical activity with Professor Alice Smith from the University of Leicester. Alice is Professor of Lifestyle medicine and leads the Leicester Kidney Lifestyle Team, an internationally renowned multidisciplinary research group which aims to help kidney patients achieve the best possible health and wellbeing through appropriate lifestyle management. Her teams’ research portfolio includes ~20 single- and multi-centre clinical trials and has recruited some 10000 participants from across England.

Life expectancy is rising in most of the world and with it we have a rising number of elderly individuals in our society. We are used to the type of medicine that is best suited for younger patients – identify the disease, give the best and most effective treatment and cure the patient. However, in elderly individuals the goals might be completely different. Do you think we are going to far sometimes? Are we really treating the patient or are we sometimes just treating the numbers.  If you’re thinking about these things, you might be on the right track. We have been talking about these things with Elke Schaeffner a well known expert in the field of CKD and elderly populations.