Health knowledge made personal
|
2006 Are your kidneys OK? 2007 Common, harmful and treatable2008 Amazing kidneys2009 Protect your kidneys: Keep your pressure down 2010 Protect your kidneys: Control Diabetes This years theme is fitting because chronic kidney disease ( CKD) alone has been established as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). A nice editorial from ISN/International Federation of Kidney Foundations World Kidney Day Committee is published online for free here outlines the lack of attention CKD is given by world governments and public health authorities. This day helps give much needed attention to CKD and hopefully will lead to more awareness and eventually more therapies. Increased recognition of CKD will hopefully lead to more aggressive therapies for blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol. Which will in turn will lead to few patients developing CVD and ESRD.What else can World Kidney Day do? We have long recognized the 20- to 30-fold increase in CVD in patients with ESRD. Much attention has been given to ESRD care. However, we have done little to impact cardiovascular mortality in patients with ESRD. Again, World Kidney Day can help give more attention to this growing problem as well. Expanding home dialysis options (daily home hemo and peritoneal dialysis) for patients on hemodialysis. This will need to be tackled on many fronts 1. Physician training and acceptance 2. Increasing infrastructure at dialysis units to deal with patient training and call system for issues related to nocturnal dialysis 3. Educating the public to know that this option can be performed safely and effectively. 4. Improving reimbursement programs to allow providers to utilize these options. Some of the fellows at Duke will be volunteering at the Raleigh NKF KEEP program this weekend to celebrate World Kidney Day. Lets spread that word about kidney disease so we can reverse this growing epidemic! |
Write a comment:
|
This years theme is-
protect your kidneys, save your heart.
World Kidney Day began in 2006 and has continued to grow each year. While every other organ system/disease has had a day/month for quite some time, it took a while to add our favorite organ (the kidney) to this list. Here are the last 5 themes for world kidney day.