First day at NKF Spring Clinical Meeting 2016

This is my second attendance to the NKF Spring Clinical Meetings in Boston, MA taking place in Hynes Convention center. I love this city; great location and very good places to eat and have fun. Also, I planned to come as I wanted to see some friends, see family and meet some great people. I signed up for one of the pre-conference courses: Kidney Transplant: Principles and Practice. Unfortunately, I missed the first talk, thanks to the Boston traffic. I am not staying in the city so I had to commute and although I left with plenty of time, I ran into traffic and construction zones. Anyway, once I arrived it was easy to find a seat; it was not too crowded and I found myself with a mixed and lively crowd: Transplant Nephrologists, Nephrologists, Fellows, Transplant coordinator, Nurse Practitioners, Social Workers, etc…

Kidney Transplantation is a field that is difficult to cover in a one single day, so this was mostly a refresher, given by experts in the field. Lunch was actually good and they had a vegetarian option (I am not). I forgot it was included and I headed down to Dunkin’ Donuts just before noon. Course covered important topics such as the current allocation system, different types of kidney donation (living and deceased donors, PKE…), immunosuppressive therapies and complications before, during (short and long-term) and after transplantation including cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular complications. One of the things that I liked the most, was the psychosocial aspect of transplant candidates and the Living Donor Champion Program. The crowd was engaged at the end of each presentation asking questions and speakers were very keen to answer all of our questions. I know time was an issue, but it would’ve been nice if they would’ve added clinical case scenarios. In addition, there are a lot of gray areas in transplantation so I wished we had more time to discuss important clinical aspects. Kidney Week (ASN conference) also has the same kidney transplantation pre-conference course so make sure to check it out as well. For people unable to come to Boston, I tried to tweet important clinical points and that is why you have to love #socialmedia.

Anyway, it was a great day and I am looking forward for day number 2 and learn some Nephrology!