Indian Society of Nephrology Southern Chapter begins 3-day conference

A three-day conference of Indian Society of Nephrology Southern Chapter (ISNSC) along with Nephrology Association of Karnataka started here at MS Ramaiah Hospital on Saturday.

The conference was attended by over 500 nephrologists from all southern states and will discuss critical aspects of kidney transplant. Dr Ramesh Prasad from Canada and Dr Tobycoates from Australia will be presenting two important papers on long term outcomes of kidney transplant and choice of drugs in kidney transplant respectively among others who are presenting around 150 papers. The use of new technology in dialysis will also be discussed.

Dr R Padmanabhan, Chairman, ISNSC, said, "It is not enough to be sound in knowledge, we should be strong in procedures also. In one paper, the researchers analysed the complexities of patients seen by different specialties on nine parameters. Nephrologists see the maximum number of complexities followed by neurologists and pulmonologists. Especially in the ICU, we find that our opinion is sought after but the next day it is not carried out."

He said nephrologists are called in the last when the patient is about to collapse and sometimes they're called very early on in ICU care. "Nephrologists are refined physicians. When we go to dialysis units, we are infectious disease specialists. When a patient crashes in our ward, we are intensivists. In case of transplants we are immunologists. Dialysis units are where our leadership qualities come out. We have to educate the patients and also guide the nurses. We also have future as epidemiologists," he said.

He also spoke about going green. "We are building a new 50-bedded dialysis unit with a capacity of 2,500 litres. The amount of water wasted is huge. I have told the engineer to direct the reject water from the dialysis unit to the sanitary line so that water is not wasted. Every year some 190 litres to 200 litres of water is wasted," he said.