As part of the AKI!Now Steering Committee, Dr. Anitha Vijayan will help increase the awareness of acute kidney injury.
Anitha Vijayan, MD, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology, will serve on the steering committee of a new initiative launched by the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) to determine how to save more lives of those suffering from acute kidney injury (AKI).
The initiative, funded by a grant from Baxter Healthcare Corporation, is called AKI!Now: Promoting Excellence in the Prevention and Treatment of Acute Kidney Injury.
Approximately 10 million people worldwide suffer from AKI each year. AKI is defined as a rapid decline in kidney function that can lead to long-term kidney damage. It is associated with high mortality and morbidity rates; nearly 1.75 million of those affected will die.
ASN has recruited some of the best minds in the kidney community for the Steering Committee. They will review, analyze, and summarize the most recent evidence on AKI to identify promising interventions and treatments. Educating the medical community on early recognition, effective interventions, best practices, and treatment pathways will follow.
“I am very thrilled to be a part of this exciting ASN initiative,” says Dr. Vijayan. “I look forward to working with other members of the steering committee and other experts to increase the awareness regarding various aspects of acute kidney injury, such as early diagnosis, care of the patient recovering from critical illness and AKI, and promoting recovery of renal function after AKI.”
For the past three years, Dr. Vijayan has been co-chair of the State and Federal Healthcare-associated Infection (HAI) workgroup for the Nephrologists Transforming Dialysis Safety Project (NTDS), helping educate the dialysis community about how infections are detected, reported and managed.
The AKI!Now Steering Committee includes:
- Jorge Cerdá, MD, MS, FASN, Chair – Albany Medical College
- Anupam Agarwal, MD, FASN – University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine
- Stuart Goldstein, MD, FASN – Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
- Kathleen D. Liu, MD, PhD, FASN – University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine
- Mark D. Okusa, MD, FASN – University of Virginia School of Medicine
- Anitha Vijayan, MD, FASN – Washington University School of Medicine
Interested in learning more or getting involved in AKI!Now? Contact Susie Stark at sstark@asn-online.org.
Follow Dr. Vijayan on Twitter @VijayanMD. Read more about her NTDS work here.