Dr. Faubel nailed the best comment about NephroCheck by reminding us while we pick apart the particulars of NephroCheck that we have some other dragons to slay:
And then Edgar slides in with the appropriate #NephPearl (How does he do that so fast?)
#NephJC 20: Who checks the checkers? Storify Part 1: EST chat
Last night we were off to a rollicking start with a great #NephJC chat - in great part due to the participation of Azra, Jay and Sarah! Joel took no time - burning the candle at both ends to do some storifys.
Here is the entire unedited archive with all the tweets from both chats:
Topic 0: Introduction, and How we do diagnose AKI?
Topic 1: Discussing DISCOVERY, SAPPHIRE and TOPAZ
Topic 2: ROC Curves and Diagnosing Aki with Nephrocheck
Topic 3: What happens now?
The GMT chat today was also very intense - Storify will follow shortly!
New for NephJC tonight: Topics
In case you haven't signed up for our mailing list (really - why not? go there and do it now!) - We are going deep on the FDA approved NephroCheck™, a new test for the early diagnosis of AKI. This is not industry sponsored BS, just honest, crowd-sourced, EBM.
For this #NephJC we have three topics we want to discuss:
*please preface your tweets with the topic: i.e. T0, T1 and so on*
Topic Zero: How are you currently diagnosing AKI?
- Is it all FENa and a microscope slide?
- What do you think of the KDIGO AKI stages?
- How do you use oliguria?
Topic 1: Evaluate their strategy for developing a novel test for AKI.
Three studies in 2 papers:
Discovery: the scientists tested 340 biomarkers and came up with a pair that performed best. N=522.
Sapphire: validated the biomarker from Discovery in a unique cohort. N=744.
Topaz: A separate study just to validate the results of Sapphire. N=420.
Is this a compelling story line? Is this a fair way to discover and validate a test? Do you agree with the conclusions?
Topic 2: Evaluating a test.
- On ROC the area under the curve was 0.82. Good enough?
- Two cutoffs are provided, one is sensitive (92%) and the other is specific (95%). How will you use that?
Topic 3: So what?
- How will having a 12 hour lead time change your management?
- Should we expect trials designed to change the course of AKI to use NephroCheck™?
GMT NephJC gaining steam
Tom Oates and his merry gang of GMT chatters shattered previous records for the Euro/Afro chat. Great work guys!
Not quite up to the pace of the western hemisphere, but gaining fast.
In a related note, NephJC.com reached 4,000 page views in a month for the first time in January.
Tweet of the night
We had a great NephJC last night. We had a new contributor who was excellent, Eric Weinhandl of Minnesota.
Dr. Weinhandl works with the new PEER Kidney Care Initiative. It looks like a cool project. Here is some press from Nephrology News and Issues.
NephJC does RSS
RSS feed users
If you like subscribing to RSS feeds to get updates - we now make it easy to subscribe to our blog feed.
Click on this link and it will allow you to subscribe easily using your choice of reader.
If You Don't Know What RSS Stands for and Would Like to Know
RSS (Rich Site Summary - or really simple syndication as it is known more popularly) refers to a family of web formats that is used to publish information for frequently updated web sites, like blog posts, newspaper headlines and journals. Subscribing to a website RSS removes the need for the user to manually check the website for new content. In addition, by entering these 'feeds' into an aggregator or feed reader (Feedly is our current favourite - since Google decided to nix Google Reader), you will have all that content 'pushed' to you, notifying you of new posts. That's our secret to knowing the latest article published in Lancet. Look for this icon to find RSS feeds for your favourite website:
There are many advantages to using RSS feeds - you can get all the content you consume into one 'reader' i.e. news, medical journals, blogs etc. And, in addition, you can skim the headline, or the abstract - and decided if you want to click the link to read the full article in the original website. Enjoy!
New kid on the block: #RheumJC
The rheumatology crew that killed it during the Rituximab for ANCA vasculitis NephJC are striking out on there own with an ambitious plan for their own twitter journal club. They are kicking it off this coming Thursday with a GMT and EST at the exact same time as our NephJCs, 8GMT and 9EST. They are then doing a consolidation wrap up discussion the following day.
The first topic is one near and dear to all of our hearts, lupus nephritis. RCT of tacrolimus versus MMF for induction.
It would be great if some of our community could support the rheumatologists as they launch their journal club.
RheumJC home page | Press coverage | Twitter feed
Fact: The co-founders of NephJC never met in person until #KidneyWk14
Joel Topf and Swapnil Hiremath never met in person until Swapnil stopped by Joel's poster on Saturday morning a couple of hours before NephJC Live. Edgar Lerma was there to document the moment.
NephJC is truly a 21st century project supported entirely by e-mail, DM, SMS and the occasional phone call.
Humble beginnings
I had thought of starting a Nephrology Journal club ever since I wrote about eJC on PBFluids. In fact if you look at my suggestions for how to improve CJASN eJC, you will see the skeleton for the current #NephJC. But ideas are cheap and I never did anything about it.
In the middle of NephMadness last year I received a tweet from from Swapnil suggesting that someone do a Nephrology Twitter Journal Club. I told him it was a great idea but that I had my hands full with NephMadness and that he should write me after the contest ended.
Literally moments after we announced the winner of NephMadness, Swapnil e-mails me about the journal club. I told him to do some research on how twitter journal clubs work and write a post on Medium. I half hoped he would drop the ball and go away but he published it on April 17. A week later we collaborated on a tighter introduction, also published on Medium (we didn't yet have our SquareSpace sight) And five days after that we held our first NephJC.