news

#AskRenal, a new social media initiative to help medical students

Renal physiology and pathophysiology is widely regarded as one of the most challenging subjects in the pre-clinical studies of medical school. The challenging subject has been blamed for the downturn in interest in our fine specialty. To help combat this we have started an initiative where a medical students can post a question to Twitter and get an answers from practicing nephrologists and basic scientists. See the kick off post at PBFluids.

The way this works is, if a student has a question they post it to Twitter with the hashtag #AskRenal. We have a bot that scours Twitter for this hashtag and will retweet the question while tagging @NephJC. NephJC will amplify the question to its audience of nephrology nerds who will then provide answers tagging the initial questioner.

Everything is in place, we are just waiting to get some student questions.

Inorder to better promote this we would like to capture when different medical students teach renal physiology and renal pathophysiology. If you know the schedule of one or two medical schools, please enter the class timing on to this crowd sourced spreadsheet

Twitter polls redux

A few months ago, we wrote about the nephro-twitterverse discovering twitter polls. Graham Abra and Thomas Hiemstra were early adopters, though response rates were ~ 20-40 at best then. But there are many more, with much better response rates. Check them out:

During #NephMadness, Krishna Penmatsa made a bunch of #PredictaPolls - check some notable ones:

 

Graham, again, on IgA nephropathy and pregnancy

Tomas Rohal on tweeps preference of social networks

Matt on the deprescribing PPI question

And the PPI article we discussed at #NephJC was actually decided on the basis of a twitter poll too!

What RRT modality would nephrons choose for themselves (sparked by a tweet from Scherly at #HDu)

Matt again on how nephrons  refer to themselves

Joel (was he making fun of my #DreamRCT, #MAGIK?

#NephJC on desensitization & the winners of the #NEJMCup

This was another great #NephJC. Notable for many firsts:

The transcripts and storifys are also already done - and up on the page, due to uber-fast curation from Hector.

Lastly, we have the pleasure of announcing the winners of the coveted #NEJMCup. There were many great tweets, so it took some time to sift through all the nominees. Here are the winning tweets:

Congratulations, Kevin and Sian! Your #NEJMCups should be on the way soon, courtesy of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Announcing the #NEJMCup for the next #NephJC, courtesy @NEJM

We are discussing an NEJM article next week (on that note check out the summary, written by Matt Graham-Brown). The hurdle? Its behind a subscriber-only wall - and this is an issue that has come up as a barrier for many of us not in academia or with a personal subscription to the Journal. However, the nice people at the Journal have kindly agreed to make it easily accessible for #NephJC readers - use the link on our summary page, and you will get the full text. 

But there is more good news. Like what we have done in the past with JAMA, the best tweet of the night will get a prize. One for each chat. 

The #NEJMCup!

The #NEJMCup!

Lastly, thanks to Lisa Rosenbaum for opening to doors to NEJM for us. 

Therapeutic Hypothermia: Comments on @PubMed Commons

Back in fall 2015, we discussed one of the few positive trials in nephrology on #NephJC, on the use of therapeutic hypothermia for cooling deceased donors and the impact of subsequent graft function. To our pleasant surprise, a few weeks later, the lead author, Claus Niemann, replied in detail to our Pubmed Commons summary comment (see here).

A weeks ago, we noticed another comment on the same article, which pointed out that the record in clinicaltrials.gov had reported a different primary outcome, which indeed it did (primary outcome was terminal graft function in donor). We noted and tweeted out this comment, and the COMPARE group also replied.

But the story is not done yet. Today there is another comment on PubMedCommons, from Melissa Greenwald of the Health Resources and Services Administration, which funded the trial. From her review of documents, delayed graft function does seem to have been one of the primary outcomes, if not the main one. Read it and decide for yourself!