Anticipated Updates in Kidney Care from NKF 2022

Announcer:
Welcome to NKF Action Center on ReachMD. On this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Vandana Niyyar, who’s a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at Emory University and has been designated Eminent Physician in the Emory School of Medicine. She is also the President-Elect of the American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Nephrology. Dr. Niyyar is here to share what she’s looking forward to seeing at the National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meeting. Let’s hear from her now.

Dr. Niyyar:
I'm really excited about going to the meeting because the NKF meeting has always been very clinically focused. And the big thing about NKF is that there's something really for every member of the kidney team. And one of the advantages this year is the fact that a lot of the sessions will be hybrid, and that gives us the opportunity to be able to view or participate in multiple sessions and not worry about scheduling constraints as we can always watch them on demand later if there's a conflict.

The sessions that I'm really interested in, there's a workshop that we are doing on ultrasound, and it's called Hocus Pocus, and so that's really exciting as it will be after a while that we'll actually being doing an in-person hands-on workshop. And at the workshop we'll have 3 rotations for all attendees so that they can learn and practice, kidney ultrasounds, lung ultrasounds and heart ultrasounds and really get familiar with the probe and comfortable with image acquisition for these three organs.

My clinical interest is in dialysis access, so I'm really very excited and very interested in the sessions that are focusing on changing paradigms, especially those that are looking at arterial venous fistulae and then comparing surgical to endovascularly created AVF and the current data that we have for them over the last few years.

And the other thing that I'm looking forward to is the latest updates in data on novel devices and technologies that may help to impact our hemodialysis vascular access outcomes like talking about what the place is for drug-coated balloons, for stent grafts, as well as new devices like the inside-out device for the treatment of central venous stenosis.  

The other thing that I'm really excited about is the presidential address and the keynote presentation because that's something that I feel that not only impacts our patients but are modifiable factors that we can actually help to change that will improve outcomes in our patients and the impact of understanding and addressing these inequities in health, whether it's socioeconomic status, racial status, ethnic status, and even social factors like education, neighborhoods, employment that can lead to improvements in health. That is so critical in all fields of healthcare but even more important in our patients on dialysis. And I'm looking forward to the sessions that actually supplement these sessions like those on achieving transplant equity and also understanding racial disparities in outcomes.

So, in addition, there's been a recent focus on home dialysis with the AAKHI executive order, Advancing American Kidney Health Initiative. At Emory, we have a pretty robust home program with around 16 percent of our patients dialyzing at home, but we are always looking for ways to do better, and so I'm really looking forward to all the sessions that will focus on trying to improve the number of our patients on home dialysis. Some of them are going to focus on the challenges of expanding dialysis at home, and that will help us not just to recognize those structural barriers but also to articulate strategies for improving at-home dialysis with an emphasis on supporting family engagement and also looking at the unique role of the home dialysis nurses that will support these therapies. And there are so many different sessions that are going to look at the fundamentals of home dialysis.

And also, if we are going to grow, we need to be able to know the right strategies, and part of that involves debunking common myths about patient eligibility for home dialysis. I think that's going to be a very interesting session. And that will focus on some common misconceptions about patient selection, and then peritoneal dialysis including the use of urgent-start PD, transitional care units, and then coming from an interventional standpoint, understanding when to insert the PD catheter in relation to PD start and also when to initiate training and to understand the components for a sustainable PD program.

And lastly, precision medicine, it's been always very fascinating to me, and I love the way the NKF program has incorporated an emphasis on precision management, whether it's fluid management in patients on renal replacement therapy that are critically ill with AKI or it's a way to personalize the prescriptions for patients on home hemodialysis by using precision medicine tools and then, also clinical applications in the prevention and treatment of kidney toxicity from drugs and other nephrotoxins.

Announcer:
That was Dr. Vandana Niyyar sharing highlight of what she is looking forward to at this year’s National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meeting. To access other episodes in this series, visit ReachMD.com/NationalKidneyFoundation, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!