Promotion of nephrologists’ participation in transplantation and development of transplant nephrologists’ program

Abstract

There are currently 14,000 kidney transplant patients in Japan. While transplantation surgeons typically take care of the post-transplant patients and living kidney transplant donors, participation of nephrologists and internal physicians has the potential to achieve satisfactory outcome by caring for kidney transplant recipients and donors from before to after transplant surgery. Medical management of the kidney transplant recipient seems to be challenging to the general nephrologists who are unfamiliar with the medical nuances of caring for these patients. This includes immunosuppressive drugs, rejection, infections, and malignancies. In these situations, it is mandatory to establish a kidney transplant education system in Japan. In this article, I will discuss the current situation and the issues of a Japanese transplant nephrology fellowship.