2013 the year in review

Only 2 posts. I think the post on some slipshod research on NSAID toxicity in children stand up pretty well. The post included an embedded tweet from leading nephrology tweeter Pascale Lane.

8 posts. The first post is one of my favorite posts of all time. It is an analysis of the ISDA/AHA clinical practice guidelines on enterococcal infective endocarditis. The post is essentially a recap and summary of Twitter conversations on the subject with some additional research to provide some context. The remainder of the month has some solid work, including a post on dialysis for cast nephropathy bemoaning the lack of Gambro 1100 dialyzer availability in the US and a follow-up on the enterococcal post with a deep dive into additional data. Social poked through in a post on the horrible slides provided by the ASN by Myron Miller. I had a nice email from Paul Segal coming to Dr. Miller’s defense and a tweet from Jim Smith regarding the post.

March was my most productive month of the year. This was because I was researching NephMadness and working on a review of geriatric fluid and electrolyte issues (don’t hold your breath, it was rejected and will not be published). My favorite post of the month is probably this one about the NKF’s effort to get dialysis covered under medicare.

April was a very social month. I posted my first Storify (a web service that allows one to easily capture and publish a collection of tweets) on the link between hyponatremia and hip fractures. I had a few posts on Nephmadness (here, here and here). There was a nice post looking at over diagnosis as it relates to breast cancer, prostate cancer and CKD.  I had a patient show up with a potassium of 9 that led to a couple of posts on hyperkalemia. The image of the EKG is one of my most popular tweets ever. I used a poll on managing the hyperkalemia. Another favorite for the year, was a post about nephrology limericks. Again, this was primarily a summary of a twitter conversation.

Another strong month. I tipped my hand about my Kidney Week poster by revealing some of the data on the nephrology blogosphere. My most shared story of the month was on NKFs poorly written story on alcohol and the kidney. PBFluids’ blade is still sharp. I had a couple of posts (here, here) on App.GoSoapBox.Com as I tried to incorporate this audience response system into my lecture. And a post with a screen cast on hyponatremia due to SIADH.

June had a number of social posts. I received a lot of commentary on a post about paying for kidney donors. There was some good discussion about my case of rhabdo with a CPK  over a million. But by far the most commented post was about the fool who drank a quart of soy sauce and developed severe hypernatremia. It resulted in two posts and another google docs poll. I also did a nice post on the Central American CKD epidemic that came after I was tweeted about my thoughts on the issue.

July was a light month, as I began to gear up for the second year medical students. I did publish my electrolyte handbook as an eBook. A project that I hope to spend more time on this year.

The big event in August was not on my blog, but on Twitter where I live tweeted the ASN Board Review Class. Awesome experience. I tweeted using the eAJKD account. Unfortunately eAJKD and I were just getting our live tweeting sea legs under us. We missed the important step of compiling the tweets into a blog post. I find that live Tweeting, focuses me and forces me to rework the information into a tweet. This helps me remember the information better. 

I went to London and live tweeted the Med 2.0 conference for eAJKD. Getting better at this. The blog had two posts where I used single tweets as jumping off sites for more extensive coverage, a model that I think best illustrates the purpose of a blog in a Twitter world. The first was on oliguria and the second was on the practice of giving patients money to help them buy medications, or in this case a treadmill.

Only 6 posts but a lot of impact. The month began beating back the idiots suggesting IV contrast is benign to the kidneys. I took the boards that month and posted my thoughts on the test and the ASN Board Review Class. The longest and one of the most important posts of the year was next. I posted on the CJASN electronic journal club. This has been a failure up to now. I hope that in 2014 this project can be re-invigorated. We will see.

I posted on the FDA’s terrible decision to deny Tolvaptan for ADPKD, following Bill Brazell’s brilliant essay in the Atlantic. We also had some fun guessing the retail price and possible names of the novel potassium binder,  KS-9. I posted on my Kidney Week experience. This was the first time I think Kidney Week really broke through on Twitter with a number of voices. It was a great success. I rounded out the month with an in-depth review of UKidney’s well done library of high-impact nephrology articles.

December was dominated by the Renal Fellow Network’s annual top nephrology stories of 2013 (see here, here, here, here and here). This turned into a collaborative effort as a lot of independent nephrology bloggers and participant in social media began to blog about different stories. I hope 2014 turns into the year when we really see more collaboration in the Nephrology Social Media Space. I think the RFN top stories offers a blue-print for this. The other post that was particularly social was an examination of an abstract linking Pip/Tazo to acute renal failure. A lot of twitter discussion on this.