January 6th Newsletter
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Happy New Year from HDU to all our friends and members. As we begin 2021, we would like to share a variety of forward thinking ideas as shown in the articles that follow. As always, we welcome your ideas for the newsletter in the "Decade of Home Dialysis."
Focus on Our Friends
BLOOD FLOW, FISTULA INTEGRITY AND OPTIMAL CLEARANCE
What should blood flow rates be for hemodialysis and how do they affect fistula integrity and dialysis clearance? The answers may be surprising.
Once again, our friends at Medical Education Institute (MEI) have provided a new presentation that will be of interest to patients and professionals alike. It's free to watch and it also offers CE credits to nurses and dialysis technicians, so feel free to share the link with any dialysis team members.
Learn from Dr. John Agar, a Global Dialysis Expert and recipient of Australia's highest honor, in a recorded webinar from Home Dialysis Central. Here is the link:
Noteworthy News
LIVING BEHIND THE MASK
In Kidney 360, kidney transplant recipient Patrick O. Gee, PhD, JLC, provides a summary and analysis of being diagnosed with COVID-19 and how his experiences exemplify challenges that others face daily relative to social justice in care delivery, complexities related to COVID-19 care in people who are immunocompromised, and ensuring patient decision-making is part of every care plan.
"COVID-19 has put a spotlight on what the kidney community has known for decades. Underlying diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, leaves individuals, especially people of color, vulnerable to severe medical conditions. As a COVID-19 survivor and a post-kidney transplant recipient, I fall into the category of these underlying diseases. When you incorporate my chronic illness with the current climate of fear, anxiety, and sadness due to the uncertainties with COVID-19, it negatively impacts your mental and physical health."
INTEGRATING PATIENT PRIORITIES WITH SCIENCE BY COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN THE KIDNEY PRECISION MEDICINE PROJECT
The Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP) is a multisite study designed to improve understanding of CKD attributed to diabetes or hypertension and AKI by performing protocol-driven kidney biopsies. A major goal of the KPMP is to include patients as equal partners to inform the research for clinically relevant benefit. Patients have guided the KPMP to produce research aligned with their priorities. The Community Engagement Committee partnership has set new benchmarks for patient leadership in precision medicine research. HDU's President, Nichole Jefferson, is part of this initiative.
Fokko Wieringa, HDU's good friend and a researcher who lives and works in the Netherlands, penned the following verse about the holiday season and his hopes for the future. Fokko is multi-talented and believed in patient focused care and real patient engagement long before most others bought into those ideas.
This year a virus - new detected -
took many lives, at first neglected.
And heavily world-wide impacted
the way we all have interacted.
This nasty microorganism,
though unaware, taught egoism
might be an unfit mechanism
for scientific pragmatism.
In research we should learn - systemic -
from this most horrible pandemic!
Cooperation academic
should yet again become endemic.
So, let us all - behind our masks -
pick up our share of needed tasks.
Be it by chips or culture flasks
to promote health, as mankind asks!
Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year!
Let's share & enjoy the One Planet we have...
Fokko Wieringa