Tag: nephrology
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Mrs. M’s refusal
Ladan GolestanehBronx, New York, United States My role as a physician includes foregoing a prescriptive approach to some patients in favor of a supportive one. Yielding to a belief system that does not fit the structure of my many years of training feels like a personal failure. But sometimes I know I have to listen…
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Fifty years on an Englishman recalls Cook County Hospital
Simon CohenLondon In 1968 I was a senior registrar at a London teaching hospital. My ambition was to become a staff member at a major London institution and at that time one of the requirements was a qualification known as the BTA (Been to America). My chief, probably correctly, recognized that I was not much…
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Dr. Willem J. Kolff: A great man
George DuneaChicago, IL In MemoriamWillem J. Kolff: A great man Willem Kolff, often called the father of the artificial kidney, died in January 2009, 3 days before his 98th birthday. During his long life he received numerous honors and accolades for his work. Many people thought he should have received the Nobel Prize, but as he once said himself, they…
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There is a time
Joel L. ChinitzPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States When the doors flew open, the noisy hoard—many in dirty, white jackets and floppy, bloodstained, green pants—circled the nurses’ station and overran the medical Intensive Care Unit. Wednesday renal rounds had begun. As two aides jumped back and fell into a linen cart, the unrelenting column spilled down the…
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The $84.77 Hospital – St. Vincent
Terri SinnottChicago, Illinois, United States What in the United States could be purchased with $87.44 in 1881? In that year Bishop Francis Silas Marean Chatard and four Daughters of Charity1 took that sum and funded the first Catholic hospital in Indianapolis. Chatard had been born in 1834 in Baltimore and his initial calling was medicine. …
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Nephrology in 10 Steps
Andrew BombackNew York, United States 1 I was seeing patients in clinic the morning my daughter was born. My wife called me to say that her contractions, relatively weak and infrequent when I had left home a few hours earlier, had suddenly picked up. She asked how quickly I could get home. I was about…
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History of nephrology: beginnings
George DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States Introduction In the second half of the 20th century nephrology became a fully-fledged specialty owing largely to the development of renal biopsy, dialysis, and kidney transplantation.1 Yet the seeds of these great advances were sown centuries earlier, based on the work and observations of scientists and clinicians dating to the…
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History of nephrology: modern era
George DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States Twentieth century Three major developments—renal biopsy, dialysis, and transplantation—revolutionized nephrology in the second half of the 20th century. Renal biopsy transformed the diagnostic approach to renal disease from a clinical methodology to one based on morphological analysis. Presently over one million patients with renal failure are maintained by dialysis throughout…
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Domenico Cotugno (1736-1822)
During a period of over 40 years Domenico Cotugno served as professor of anatomy at the University of Naples, one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the world, founded by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederic II in 1224. His academic career was marked by several important advances for which he is remembered today,…