The aim of the session is to summarize the current understanding of the molecular biology of arteriovenous fistula (AVF). It intends to encourage vascular access teams, care providers, and scientists, to explore new molecular tools for assessing the suitability of patients for AVF as vascular access for maintenance hemodialysis (HD). This session also highlights the most recent discoveries and may serve as a guide to explore biomarkers and technologies for the assessment of kidney disease patients choosing to start kidney replacement therapy.  

The talk will focus on the recent progress in genetics and genomics research, which now enable introduction of genetic testing in kidney care. The combination of genetic and electronic health data can advance research and provide you opportunities for delivering more tailored care for patients with kidney diseases.

Vascular calcification is a common complication in CKD. So far, studies aimed at unraveling the pathophysiology have focused on the role of a disturbed mineral metabolism. CKD is als a state of microinflammation. Mointing evidence points to inflammation and oxidative stress as underappreciated catalysators of vascular calcification.  

This session will start with an overview of artificial intelligence (AI), including examples of AI in everyday life, different learning types, and model performance measures.  Then you will review examples of how AI has been used in nephrology.  This includes a discussion on using deep learning to predict acute kidney injury at various time points, random forest to predict the progression of diabetic kidney disease, and deep learning to determine left ventricular ejection fraction using electrocardiograms.  The talk will end with a brief overview of current barriers to implementing AI into nephrology clinical care and discuss efforts to break these barriers.  

This session reviews the differences in peritoneal dialysis-related issues among pediatric PD patients including developmental changes of the peritoneum, the high prevalence of high transporters on PET, the impact on dialysis prescription, pH trauma caused by conventional PD solutions and long-term effects of PD using either conventional and physiologic PD solutions in children and adolescents. The session features unseen peritoneal biopsies after 6 years of PD using physiologic solutions.

The goal of this session is a roundtable discussion with Drs. Amaka Eneanya, Maria Ferris, Jeroen Kooman, and Peter Kotanko and will talk about the novel and emerging therapies, racial disparity, and other issues facing nephrologists, which all could be topics for the 25th anniversary of the RRI Conference.

Despite decades of research demonstrating that exercise can improve the health and quality of life of hemodialysis (HD) patients, the implementation of exercise programs in dialysis clinics today is scarce, and physical inactivity and dysfunction remain a hallmark of the disease. As a result, groups worldwide are beginning to rethink how physical activity and exercise is prescribed in HD patients, as well as how to evaluate the efficacy of these programs. This presentation will critically assess data from major clinical trials on exercise in HD patients, discuss novel approaches that groups worldwide are using to improve the efficacy of exercise interventions, and discuss policy prescriptions that are needed to improve implementation.  

Wearable sensor devices have been used in various chronic diseases like heart failure. For chronic kidney disease, the experience is more limited. Wearable sensor devices may identify undetected signals by conventional means, which may be relevant for the treatment and may also play a role in the self-management of patients on dialysis. In this talk, the potential and challenges of wearable sensors in the integrated care of patients on dialysis will be discussed after a short discussion on the technical principles.