interventional nephrology???

[jayman]

what the heck is "interventional" nephrology???

is there an actual interventional fellowship post-IM or post-nephrology? or are these guys just trying to call themselves "interventional" in order to try to get better reimbursements, but still doing pretty much the same thing as the typical nephrologists we all know?

any thoughts appreciated.

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[ckent]

I've never heard of an interventional nephrologist. I can only imagine 2 possible things that would cause a nephrologist to call himself interventional, one is that nephrologists do a lot of kidney biopsies which is an invasive procedure but hardly interventional. The other is that I understand that there was some talk before of training nephrologists to do renal arteriograms and possibly angiography, but I haven't heard that much of this since a while ago. My understanding is that renal arteriograms and endarterectomies are currently the domain of Interventional radiologists and vascular surgeons.

 

[jayman]

hey ckent (and potential others)...

i found this off a google search...do you think there's anything to it? or is this sort of thing more the exception than the norm?

www.med.miami.edu/med/nephrology/ programs_interventional.asp

thanks for the previous follow-up, btw.

 

[jayman]

sorry...don't know why the whole url didn't become active...here it is again...but the interventional link is on the left-hand side of the miami nephro webpage.

http://www.med.miami.edu/med/nephrology/programs_interventional.asp

 

[jayman]

any takers? still curious about this.
thanks.

 

[ckent]

I spoke with my attending nephrologist about this and he said that even though there are programs that will teach you stuff (as your website is alluding to), they are in the minority and most people just do it for money. It's not a real specialty, all you have to do is get some minor training, but IMO and my attendings opinion, most of the stuff that they are doing is better left to the surgeons/IR people who trained during residency for this kind of stuff.