How Can I Prevent Kidney Disease?

Your kidneys are vital organs that keep your blood clean and free of waste. When something goes wrong with your kidneys, you can develop serious health problems, which is why it is important to take steps to stop kidney disease before it develops. In this Q&A,...

A Free Throw Challenge Helps Raise Awareness for Kidney Disease

More than 200 individuals participated in the Annual Kidney Cancer and Kidney Health Fair, a March Madness-themed event organized by Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh, the Kyung Hyun Kim, MD Chair in Urology, and Ketan K. Badani, MD, Professor of Urology at the Icahn School of...

Novel Product to Help Patients at Risk for Kidney Disease

Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, left, and Steven G. Coca, DO

Steven G. Coca, DO, and Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, nephrologists in the Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Health System, have invented an artificial intelligence-based prognostic scoring system that is designed to identify patients at high risk for developing progressive kidney disease.

The pioneering product, KidneyTrack™, will enable medical professionals to intervene early in a patient’s disease cycle when treatment is most effective, before kidney disease advances to kidney failure, which requires dialysis. KidneyTrack combines data from the electronic medical record, with genetic information and novel blood biomarkers, and is paired with suggestions for optimized preventive treatment and management options for patients, particularly those at early stages of kidney disease.

To commercialize KidneyTrack, Mount Sinai Innovation Partners, in collaboration with Drs. Coca and Nadkarni, entered into a partnership agreement with RenalytixAI, Plc. The partnership will leverage Mount Sinai’s data warehouse, which contains more than 3 million patient health records and 43,000 patient records in its BioMe™ Biobank repository. KidneyTrack, which will enable clinicians to continuously monitor and identify patients in the Mount Sinai Health System who are at risk for progressive kidney disease and dialysis, will be tested for its clinical utility in a multicenter study beginning in mid-2019.

Barbara Murphy, MD, Chair of the Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will serve as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of RenalytixAI. Along with Drs. Coca and Nadkarni, Judy H. Cho, MD, Director of the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine, and John Cijiang He, MD, PhD, Chief, Division of Nephrology, also will serve on the Scientific Advisory Board.

Diabetes and high blood pressure are the leading causes of kidney failure. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that the United States spends approximately $34 billion to treat kidney failure. The National Kidney Foundation reports more than 500,000 patients are being treated with dialysis for the disease.

“There is a general lack of awareness on the part of patients and health care providers regarding chronic kidney disease and there hasn’t been enough focus on and resources in preventing it,” says Dr. Coca, Associate Professor of Medicine (Nephrology), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Both the providers and the patients themselves will receive updates on their risk score generated by KidneyTrack, which will serve to increase awareness and motivation for behavioral change and management strategies.”

Adds Dr. Nadkarni, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Nephrology), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Clinical Director of the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine, “Using comprehensive data from so many patients will make a difference in people’s lives. Now we can look at associations and relationships that were not possible before at this scale and change the paradigm.”

Initially, KidneyTrack will focus on patients with type 2 diabetes and those of African ancestry. Data generated from this will potentially be useful in analyzing other groups of patients at risk for progressive kidney disease.

“This new technology has the potential to help patients with renal disease on a global basis and may support the development of additional applications for monitoring individuals with other chronic diseases,” says Erik Lium, PhD, Executive Vice President of Mount Sinai Innovation Partners.

 

Basketball Fun Helps Raise Awareness for Kidney Disease

Attendees had fun making free throws and learning about kidney health from members of the Mount Sinai Health System’s Department of Urology at a March Madness-themed Kidney Cancer and Health Fair on Wednesday, March 28. The event, held in Guggenheim Pavilion, featured...

Metro New York’s Ask Mount Sinai: How do you know if you have kidney cancer?

Some cancers are largely discovered “incidentally,” or when a person is seeking treatment for an unrelated reason; kidney cancer is one of those. Ketan Badani, MD, Professor, Urology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, explains the risk of kidney cancer and some of the ways doctors are trying to improve early detection and intervention. “The majority of kidney cancers are asymptomatic. Whatever the symptom was that got you to your primary doctor or the emergency room is probably completely unrelated to the fact that you found a kidney tumor,” says Dr. Badani, who is Vice Chairman, Urology, Robotic Operations, and Director, Comprehensive Kidney Cancer Center at Mount Sinai Health System, and Director, Robotic Surgery, at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai West.

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Mount Sinai Surgeons Are First in New York State To Perform HIV-Positive Kidney Transplant

Patient Alexandra Harry, center, with her Mount Sinai clinical team, from left: Shirish S. Huprikar, MD; Susan Lerner, MD; Brandy Haydel, Clinical Research Program Director; and Sander Florman, MD.

Patient Alexandra Harry, center, with her Mount Sinai clinical team, from left: Shirish S. Huprikar, MD; Susan Lerner, MD; Brandy Haydel, Clinical Research Program Director; and Sander Florman, MD.

The Mount Sinai Hospital recently became the first hospital in New York State and
the second in the nation to perform a kidney transplant from an HIV-positive deceased donor to an HIV-positive recipient, the result of federal legislation that went into effect late last year making such transplants possible.

Led by Sander Florman, MD, Director of the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute, and the Charles Miller, MD Professor of Surgery, Mount Sinai is one of four medical centers in the country with federal approval to perform liver and kidney transplants under the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act.

“The new law is a win-win for everyone,” says Dr. Florman. “This represents the potentially largest increase to the organ donor pool in many years and could provide more organs for everyone.”

Prior to the HOPE Act, organs from HIV- positive donors were not legally allowed to be procured for transplant into patients with HIV—the only people eligible to receive them—which made organ waiting lists longer for all patients, including those without HIV. The average wait for a kidney from a deceased non-HIV donor is seven years in New York, according to Dr. Florman.

Alexandra Harry, 55, the first Mount Sinai patient to receive a kidney under the new law, called the transplant “a gift that has given me the opportunity for a better quality of life.” Since 2005, she had been on peritoneal dialysis, which had to be performed 10 hours each night. Ms. Harry says she learned about her eligibility to participate in Mount Sinai’s program only two weeks before she actually received
a suitable kidney, so the entire process was very quick.

A few days after her surgery this past spring, Ms. Harry said, “I felt an improvement almost immediately.” Her surgeon was Susan Lerner, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery and Medical Education at the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute. Shirish S. Huprikar, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Transplant Infectious Diseases at the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute, worked closely with the team to evaluate the appropriateness of HIV-positive donors.

According to Ms. Harry’s son, Aaron, 35, the transplant will enable his mother to travel more freely and see her extended family more frequently without the burden of carrying the medical supplies and equipment needed for her dialysis. “With this kidney, I see more
doors opening,” he says.

Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore and Mount Sinai were the first to perform the transplants. Like Ms. Harry, all recipients must agree to participate in clinical research approved by each hospital’s Institutional Review Board under criteria set by the National Institutes of Health. Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia and the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center also have permission to perform these transplants.

At Mount Sinai, there are currently about 80 HIV patients waiting for a kidney transplant and 12 waiting for a liver transplant, says Dr. Florman. It has been estimated that this new source of organs could be enough for as many as 2,500 additional deceased donor transplants in the United States each year.

Dr. Florman recently participated in an Organ Summit in Washington, D.C., hosted by the White House. At the summit, senior administration officials and transplant specialists from hospitals, universities, foundations, and patient advocacy organizations created a Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel with the goal of establishing a national clearinghouse of educational resources about transplant and living donation for patients, living donors, and the public.

“The need for organs for transplantation far exceeds the availability, and the waiting lists continue to grow,” says Dr. Florman. “People’s lives depend on these efforts, so we must find ways to increase the donor supply and also encourage living donation.”

Researchers Identify Genes That Predict Damage in Donated Kidneys

HI_RES_MURPHY (1)Kidney transplantation is the most common type of organ transplant surgery in the United States with over 17,000 kidney transplantations performed in 2014, according to the National Kidney Foundation. However, long-term survival still remains a challenge. While there is no actual crystal ball to predict whether a transplanted kidney will later develop fibrosis – a chronic injury that is a major cause of allograft loss after the first year – a team of researchers, led by Mount Sinai’s Barbara Murphy, MD, System Chair, Department of Medicine, Murray M. Rosenberg Professor of Medicine, Dean for Clinical Integration and Population Health, has identified a panel of 13 genes that does just that. These recently discovered 13 genes are highly predictive of decline in renal function and eventual loss of transplanted kidneys. (more…)

What is the right treatment for kidney tumors?

Guest post by Reza Mehrazin, MD, Assistant Professor of Urologic Oncology in the Department of Urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. To make an appointment with Dr. Mehrazin, call 212-241-4812.

Reza Mehrazin, MDKidney cancer, also known as renal cell carcinoma (RCC), is among the most lethal of urologic cancers. In 2015, 61,560 new cases are estimated to occur in the United States and approximately 23% of these patients are expected to die from their disease. The incidence of kidney cancer, particularly small tumors which are less than 4 cm in diameter, has been on a rise and this has largely been attributed to the increased use of cross-sectional abdominal imaging, such as CT or MRI scans. Although surgery and removal of the tumor is the standard of care for kidney cancer, there is growing understanding that in some patients who are elderly and/or have other medical conditions, the potential benefits of surgery is questionable. For these patients, active surveillance or close monitoring of the renal tumors could be a great option. There are many studies that show that an initial short-term period of observation to better understand the tumor growth rate may be safe for small kidney tumors in select candidates. (more…)

Mount Sinai Launches New Kidney Center and Home Dialysis Program

Mount Sinai Launches New Kidney Center and Home Dialysis ProgramThe Mount Sinai Health System Division of Nephrology recently opened the Mount Sinai Kidney Center at East River Plaza, located at East 117th Street in East Harlem. (See photo). The 18,000-square-foot facility—which replaces The Mount Sinai Hospital’s dialysis clinic on East 94th Street—offers patients a complete range of services, including hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, and home hemodialysis. It features a state-of-the-art water filtration system, an increased number of stations, and easy access to public transportation. In addition, space has been allocated for an interventional suite to perform radiological procedures on-site. (more…)

Kidney Stone Center Opens

The Kidney Stone Center at Mount Sinai opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and reception on Monday, April 20, at Mount Sinai Roosevelt’s Department of Urology. The new Center offers a comprehensive approach to manage and treat kidney stones, with a focus on prevention. “We have an integrated team of urologists, nephrologists, and other specialists who employ a wide range of noninvasive and minimally invasive procedures to treat and prevent all sizes and types of kidney stones,” says Mantu Gupta, MD, Chair of Urology at Mount Sinai Roosevelt and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, and Director of Endourology and Stone Disease for the Mount Sinai Health System. The Center has two locations: Mount Sinai Roosevelt, 425 West 59th Street, Suite 4F, and 625 Madison Avenue, Second Floor.

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