Precious Bodily Fluids

In 2011 there were 1.27 applicants for every nephrology fellowship position. In 2013 there were 0.76. http://t.co/3w6C7Cgd9j
— Joel Topf (@kidney_boy) January 9, 2014

The chief inspiration was not a person at all, it was a book. During my fourth year of medical school, years before I was ready, I read Burton Rose’s classic, Clinical Physiology of Acid-Base and Electrolyte Disorders. It is a wonderful book and it absolutely was the inspiration that launched my career.

Wikipedia is increasingly becoming the initial access point for people to learn about nephrology and we should be better caretakers of it as it is a reflection of our specialty.

How I learned to stop fearing and love Wikipedia….my latest editorial at Wing of Zock. Go read it: http://t.co/ulIC823p30
— Joel Topf (@kidney_boy) January 23, 2014

@kidney_boy Nice article, biggest limitation is getting trainees to recognize errors? (especially subtly incorrect info)?
— DrWario (@DoctorWari0) January 23, 2014

@DoctorWari0 but isn’t that 1 of the most important lessons we should be treating students, how to recognize when source material is correct
— Joel Topf (@kidney_boy) January 24, 2014

@kidney_boy Loved your write up on @Wikipedia for @wingofzock potential exercise for #flippedlearning: use class time to edit wiki
— Rob Cooney, MD, MEd (@EMEducation) January 23, 2014

@kidney_boy @ShabbirHossain @krw127 We’re all “guilty”(?) of using wikipedia. knowing the limits of your sources is important. Thx for post!
— Charlie M. Wray (@WrayCharles) January 24, 2014

Yep. Also, Wikipedia is a good starting point MT @kidney_boy: How I learned to stop fearing and love Wikipedia…. http://t.co/OxXYzQUgRk
— Miloš Miljković (@Miljko) January 23, 2014

This summer, through luck and/or moxie I was able to land a plum position on the KDIGO team charged with building the mobile app. The team partnered with the crazy effective nerds at Visible Health to push out our initial vision. Our 1.0 for iPad was launched at ASN Kidney Week in Atlanta. Internally, we described the project as building a bridge across a gorge. This 1.0 is like a piece of dental floss connecting the two sides. It is an important step but it we have big plans for future versions.

We have received a lot of feedback on the initial release and the overwhelming requests are: Android, iPhone, Android, iPhone, Android, iPhone.

We are going to do both, but neither are the next step. The 1.0 version is essentially a PDF reader with all 9 KDIGO guidelines pre-loaded. Moving the app to Android and the iPhone will entail porting all of the guidelines to a new data model. We have a big vision for the product and are reworking the infrastructure to get there. Those two updates will come but they need to wait for the new data structure, for now, the only thing I can tell you is: Patience.

The current version of KDIGO Mobile has a community option that is a ghost town. We are going to tear that down and instead adopt the renal community on Twitter. The new social section will have a number of ways to view twitter that are designed to expose new people to the vibrant nephrology discussions that occur in there.

Users will have a number of twitter channels that they can tune into:

• Current Twitter users will be able to view their timeline
• Collecting duct: this is a highly selected list of twitter accounts consisting primarily of professional societies, journals and government organizations (Members | Timeline)
• Proximal tubule: this is a highly curated list of users that typically provide intelligent nephro-oriented discussion  (Members | Timeline)
• Glomerulus: this is a general list of every nephrologist and nephrology related organization I could find. (Members | Timeline)
• Hashtags: this will be one or two hashtags that are of interest to nephrologists. For example, during next years Kidney Week, we would push out #KidneyWk14, during NephMadness we would highlight #NephMadness, We might leave #MedEd, #FOAMed, and #HCSM up at other times. etc.

All of these channels are stored on the servers at Visible Health so they can be controlled remotely and are eternally updatable.

Today, we are asking members of the nephrology social media sphere to look at the lists, try out the timelines, explore the hashtags. Tell us if we missed anyone or added someone undeserving.

When evaluating the timelines keep in mind the goal of these Twitter channels. We want to introduce new users to the utility of twitter for nephrology discussions. The timeline that I am most concerned about is the proximal tubule. The collecting tubule is an official channel and will likely be pretty dry. The glomerulus I think will be too much of a fire hydrant and I am thinking about dropping that channel altogether. I’m hoping that the proximal tubule can have relevant, compelling, content to really show off the utility of Twitter to naive KDIGO users.

Any and all feedback would be appreciated.

I give monthly lectures to the residents at three hospitals. I bill the lectures as a comprehensive, year-long, fluid and electrolyte course. I have never established a fixed curriculum for the lectures, here is one take:

1. Body water, IV fluids and diuretics
2. Rapid interpretation of ABGs
3. Acute Kidney Injury
4. Osmoregulation and hyponatremia
5. Hypernatremia
6. Anion Gap metabolic acidosis
7. Potassium
8. Metabolic alkalosis and hypokalemia
9. Non-anion gap metabolic acidosis
10. Calcium and phosphorous and metabolic bone disease
11. Electrolyte emergencies
12. Board review practice

Kidney TREKS is a program for medical students who want to learn about nephrology. Here are the components of the program from the website:

• Attend the Mount Desert Island Biologic Laboratories “Origins of Renal Physiology” course for students, June 6-13, 2014. Tuition, travel stipend to Maine, room and board are paid by ASN.
• Become connected with a nephrologist-mentor who will interact with the student over the course of medical school training, graduate school or postdoctoral fellowship.
• Attend ASN Kidney Week during the 3rd or 4th year of medical school or graduate school with travel support (as a part of the ASN Program for Students and Residents).
• Receive complimentary membership to the ASN with access to website resources for students.

Imagine hiking around this beautiful island after learning the secretes of glomerular filtration.

Mount Desert Island Biologic Lab, home to the world’s nerdiest fence.

This morning I was trying to imagine the mad electrolyte gurus of UT Southwestern in Dallas influencing the naming of the RTAs to match their Area code. Well played Donald Seldin, well played.

Not to be outdone, Dalya Munves joined in the area code and medicine game.

@kidney_boy other Dallas area code is 972, which is imprinted on amphetamine/dextroamphetamine tabs! #ADHDpride
— The Health Scout (@HealthScoutBlog) January 7, 2014

@HealthScoutBlog that’s why on the street they are call Ewings #ImMakingThisUp pic.twitter.com/sAVc4Wixvb
— Joel Topf (@kidney_boy) January 7, 2014

Any other area code-medicine mash-ups out there?

Note. The following 5 paragraphs from Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs that I read in 1995 has stayed with me since then. Love this minutia:

“Maybe. But let me digress a bit. Here’s something interesting . . . did you know you can figure out how important your state or province was circa 1961 by adding up the code’s three digits? Zero equals 10.” 

“No.” 

“It’s because zeros used to take forever to go around the little rotary dial-while ones zipped along quickest. The lowest possible code, 212, went to the busiest place, New York City. Los Angeles got 213. Alaska got 907. See my point?” 

Karla always comes up with the best digressions. “Yes.” 

“Imagine Angie Dickinson in Los Angeles (213) telephoning Suzanne Pleshette in Las Vegas (702) sometime before the Kennedy assassination. She dials the final ‘2,’ breaks a fingernail, and cusses a shit under her breath, irritated at Suzanne for being in a location with a loser area code.”

2013 was a great year for the blog and for social media in nephrology. After a down year in 2012 for PBFluids, only 57 posts all year, I bounced back by nearly doubling that productivity with 112 posts last year. One of my most productive years. But to me the most remarkable change has been the emergence of a nephrology community in social media. My posts here at PBFluids certainly dripped with social media. Here is the year in review month by month.

January

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.

February

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

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

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.

@MGKatz036 Stop that NaCl its the reason he’s not doing well In order to volume resuscitate The hip new thing is Ringers Lactate
— Joel Topf (@kidney_boy) April 18, 2013

May

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

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

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.

August

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. 

September

 

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.

October

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.

November

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

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.