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ASN: Nephrologists Focus Globally

Philadelphia (November 8, 2011) — This year's meeting of the American Society of Nephrology -- now called Kidney Week instead of Renal Week -- will have a worldwide focus, according to the program chair Mark Okusa, MD.

The theme of the meeting, Okusa told MedPage Today,is global kidney health through research and education. As meeting organizers were selecting the theme, he said, they considered the continuing problems of noncommunicable health issues that directly affect kidney health.

"For instance, obesity and diabetes are basically in epidemic proportion, not only in the United States but in the whole world," Okusa, of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said. "And so the focus on global health was very important to us."

One way the organizers will focus attention on certain key issues is through the "meetings within a meeting" approach, grouping together presentations on topics of special interest in the same location and at the same time each day. The program dealing with obesity and diabetes, for example, is dubbed "diabesity."
Two Hot Topics sessions and a Late-Breaking Clinical Trials session will also cover top-of-mind issues for most nephrologists, Okusa said.

In one of the Hot Topics sessions, for instance, attendees will learn about the recent European outbreak of hemolytic-uremic syndrome caused by an E. coli variant and the treatment that was started in response -- the monoclonal antibody eculizumab (Soliris).