Kidney Week Approaches

Next week the nephrology world will gather in Philadelphia for the annual ASN Kidney Week. This will be the most social Kidney Week ever. If you are interested in social media and nephrology I'd like to call your attention to a handful of events:

Thursday November 13 ASN Special Session on Social Media. 10:30 in Room 201C. This is the first time social media has been covered a part of the core curriculum at ASN. It should be awesome. ASN has assembled an all-star team to present:

• Dr. Brian Vartabedian (@Doctor_V) author of The Public Physician and blogger at 33 Charts
• The Public Physician: The Emerging Role of the Physician in a Connected, Always-On World.
• Dr Margaret S. Chisolm (@Whole_Patients) contributor to the Johns Hopkins Reflections on Clinical Excellence blog. Author of Social media and physicians' online identity crisis.
• Social Media Challenges to Professionalism: Do the Rules Change or Do We Change Social Media?
• Sarah E. Kucharski (@AfternoonNapper) an ePatient with fibromuscular dysplasia. She is the Coordinator of ePatient Programs for Stanford's MedX and founder of the twitter chat FMDchat.org.
• Patients Turning Likes and Retweets into Healing: Social Media and the Age of the Empowered ePatient.
• Joel M. Topf, MD (@Kidney_boy) blogger at PBFluids.com, contributor of AJKDblog, co-creator of NephMadness, DreamRCT and NephJC.
• Social Media: How to Get Started

Thursday at 12:45 CJASN and the guys from eJC will be running a session on doing A Better Journal Club. I think I will be speaking for 5 or 10 minutes about my experience with NephJC. Room 104 of the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Thursday night at 8:30 pm, Blogger Night (after the ASN Presidents Reception). If you like the Neph Social Media Crew from Twitter, Renal Fellow Network, AJKDblog or NephJC, join us for drinks at Field House Philly. It is a sports bar. Look for me in the AJKD hat.

Saturday 10-12 Poster Session. SA-PO661 NephMadness Poster session. Sucks that I'll have to miss late breaking trials, what is usually the best session of the week, but oh well. I'll have to keep up via Twitter.

Saturday 12:30-1:20. NephJC Live. NephJC is doing a live ancillary session. We will take the awesome dynamic of the twice monthly twitter chats and see how well it translates to a live session. We have two young investigators presenting data.

The first is Deirdre Sawinski, MD, Assistant Professor from University of Pennsylvania who is going to speaking on her study of kidney transplants in HIV positive patients.

The second is Francis Wilson, MD who will be presenting data from a recently completed RCT on acute kidney injury. In addition to a platinum pated CV he is an experienced singing waiter so hopefully we will get an ad hoc performance.

NephJC Live will also be awarding the first Nephrology Social Media Awards. We will be giving awards for best tweeter, best new tweeter, best blog post about the conference and best curtain of the conference (best Storify related to ASN Kidney Week) I will have a post on the Social Media Awards later this week-end.

The thing about the NephJC Live is that if you want to come you need to register by Sunday, November 9 so we can buy you lunch. Registration closes on Sunday. Register now.

Ever heard of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome? Updated

From a letter in the 1968 NEJM:

Ever heard of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome? http://t.co/VO7pvItjDF Anyone know if he ever got an answer? pic.twitter.com/zdgBIagW72
— Joel Topf (@kidney_boy) October 9, 2014

In a world full of weird coincidences, just days after that tweet, Ira Flatow from Science Friday fame covered Chinese Food Syndrome:

Omg! Science Friday with Ira Flato just referenced Chinese Food Syndrome and that letter from 1968. Weird. http://t.co/oOmvsXnN4Z
— Joel Topf (@kidney_boy) October 10, 2014

Questioning Medicine, sweet podcast.

This morning I received this tweet:

https://t.co/CKcoDOQAE4 @kidney_boy most recent podcast we find a way to make u rich @ 2:45 pic.twitter.com/6eyVJHXmGn
— Andrew Buelt DO (@AndrewBuelt) October 3, 2014

Somehow it reminded me of an email I once received from Nigeria:

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP 

FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS BY VIRTUE OF ITS NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND 'TOP SECRET'. I AM SURE AND HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING MAXIIMUM CONFIDENCE. 

WE ARE TOP OFFICIAL OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTRACT REVIEW PANEL WHO ARE INTERESTED IN IMPORATION OF GOODS INTO OUR COUNTRY WITH FUNDS WHICH ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN NIGERIA. IN ORDER TO COMMENCE THIS BUSINESS WE SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE TO ENABLE US TRANSFER INTO YOUR ACCOUNT THE SAID TRAPPED FUNDS. 

THE SOURCE OF THIS FUND IS AS FOLLOWS; DURING THE LAST MILITARY REGIME HERE IN NIGERIA, THE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS SET UP COMPANIES AND AWARDED THEMSELVES CONTRACTS WHICH WERE GROSSLY OVER-INVOICED IN VARIOUS MINISTRIES. THE PRESENT CIVILIAN GOVERNMENT SET UP A CONTRACT REVIEW PANEL AND WE HAVE IDENTIFIED A LOT OF INFLATED CONTRACT FUNDS WHICH ARE PRESENTLY FLOATING IN THE CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA READY FOR PAYMENT. 

So I hid my checkbook before I went and checked out the podcast. No worries, they never asked me to send any money to complete the download or authorize my listening. It was just a great medical podcast. The two hosts have excellent chemistry and the discussion was astute and evidence based. I highly recommend it.

You can find Questioning Medicine in iTunes.

Kidney Transplant Report Cards are Out

The Information from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) publish transplant statistics for every transplant center. 7/2/12 – 6/30/13

Here are the results from Michigan. St John's is doing a great job!