March is National Kidney Month, which brings awareness to kidney health, which in turn is a global public health burden. For this last episode of Physician’s Weekly podcast this March of 2022, we wanted to highlight a recent publication about the use of diuretics in patients with chronic kidney disease, or CKD, with a prevalence of 11% in the USA . Diuretics are useful in the management of most patients with CKD because they reduce ECF volume; lower blood pressure; potentiate the effects of ACE inhibitors, ARBs, and other antihypertensive agents; and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in CKD.
Physician’s Weekly’s Senior Editor Martta Kelly interviews Dr. Alan S Go, of the Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, whose team looked at the effect of diuretics on renal outcomes among nearly 48K adults with chronic kidney disease. Loop and thiazide class diuretics are an important part of guideline-directed medical therapy for patients with CKD with hypertension, edema, metabolic acidosis and/or hyperkalemia. Yet diuretics can be also be associated with acute elevations in serum creatinine and electrolyte derangements. Whether diuretics result in direct kidney injury versus benign hemoconcentration of serum creatinine remains controversial, which was the rationale behind this large study.
But first, March is also famous for MATCH DAY from the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). Match Day is when domestic and international medical school students and graduates learn in which U.S. residency programs they will train. Naturally this is extremely important to the careers of all residents and it is coupled with high stress and anxiety, as well as questions about how best to prepare. Some recent participants set up a Resident-led platform, called Inside The Match, with information, help reviewing your applications, and a podcast series to provide everything you wanted to know about the residency match process but were too afraid to ask.
Physician’s Weekly interviews psychiatry resident and co-founder Simone Bernstein, previously recognized as a social entrepreneur in Forbes’ 30 under 30 list. She is truly a mover and shaker!
Enjoy listening!
Additional reading:
https://www.insidethematch.com/
Fitzpatrick JK, Yang J, Ambrosy AP, Cabrera C, Stefansson BV, Greasley PJ, Patel J, Tan TC, Go AS. Loop and thiazide diuretic use and risk of chronic kidney disease progression: a multicentre observational cohort study. BMJ Open. 2022 Jan 31;12(1):e048755.
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Thanks for listening!