Description
The last 20 years have seen huge progress in the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of chronic kidney disease moving it from a condition with an almost inevitably poor outcome to something that can be managed long term whilst giving a good quality of life.
Central to this change has been the routine use of blood and urine tests.
Many of these tests appear very familiar but to optimise their diagnostic yield we need to understand exactly what they tell us and how they may be affected in renal disease and by other factors.
In addition, the use of clinical decision limits such as those defined within the recent IRIS guidelines to determine kidney disease stage and appropriate therapy challenge some of our conventional ideas about test result interpretation.
In this webinar Nick Carmichael will review the commonly used tests in renal disease, their interpretation and give some guidance for working with IRIS, building a comprehensive but cost- effective approach to monitoring these cases suitable for practice. On the way he will briefly discuss the pathophysiology behind the tests and share some practical tips to ensure the best results from samples analysed in practice or sent out to an external lab.
Nick Carmichael spent 10 years in a mixture of first and second opinion small animal practice before returning to his first love of veterinary pathology. He has worked as a clinical pathologist for over 20 years and is currently the veterinary director of CTDS, a diagnostic laboratory he established together with Dr Andy Torrance in 2004. The lab is one of only a handful in the UK accredited by the laboratory standards committee of the European College of Veterinary Clinical Pathology as a training laboratory for clinical pathologists. The lab provides diagnostic services to first opinion and second opinion practices across the UK and prides itself on the quality not only of the pathology but also on the level of service, contact and follow up with clinicians.
This is in line with Nick’s view that the role of the clinical pathologist is to act as bridge between the laboratory science and clinical practice ensuring we make the best possible use of the information we have for the benefit of the patient and their owners.
Nick enjoys and reports on all aspects of clinical pathology but has a special interest in neurology, haematology and clinical pathology in exotic species.