Overview

This three-day course provides an update on renal transplantation for nephrology clinicians, renal transplant surgeons and renal nurses.

You'll learn about the clinical aspects of kidney transplants, from donor and recipient selection through to surgical and medical management post-transplant.

You'll also have the opportunity to discuss practical aspects of difficult cases.

You'll be able to apply the skills you learn on this course in your everyday workplace to deliver a better standard of care for your patients.

Who this course is for

The course is designed for:

• consultant and trainee nephrologists
• recently appointed consultant and trainee transplant surgeons

Nursing staff who specialise in this field will also find the course of interest.

Although some of the statistics and guidelines discussed on the course are UK specific, the key concepts and learning aims are relevant internationally.

Course content

The topics covered on each day are as follows:

Day 1: Wednesday, 27th September 2023  

09:00 - 17:15 hrs (BST/UTC +1)

• State of play – renal transplantation in the UK
• Immunological assessment pre- and post-transplantation
• Histocompatibility and immunogenetic (H&I) cases (breakout rooms session)
• Cardiac evaluation
• Anaesthetic evaluation and management of the recipient
• Evaluation of the increased risk recipient (case based)
• Deceased donor evaluation
• Assessment of live donors including increased/high risk donors
• Approaches for the sensitised patient/ABOi and HLAi
• Keynote lecture (tbc)

Day 2: Thursday, 28th September 2023

09:00 - 17:15 hrs (BST/UTC +1)

• Maximising deceased donor kidney utilisation
• Kidney transplantation - surgical techniques and management of complications
• Deceased donor kidney retrieval, preservation and perfusion
• Organ-offer scenarios (breakout rooms session)
• Pancreas transplantation, why, who and how?
• Lower urinary tract reconstructions - what the non-urologist needs to know
• Living kidney donation - surgical aspects and donor outcomes
• Keynote Lecture: tbc

Day 3: Friday 29th September 2023

09:00 - 17:15 hrs (BST/UTC +1)

• Induction and maintenance immunosuppression
• Acute and chronic rejection
• Recurrent disease
• An introduction to renal transplant pathology
• Histology cases (breakout rooms session)
• Cancer and transplantation (including PTLD)
• Infectious diseases cases (breakout rooms session)
• Bone-disease post-transplant
• Reproductive medicine in transplantation
• Graft survival and sustainability in transplantation

Access to videos after the course

Access to videos of the talks is included in your course fee.  The links to the videos will be sent to you approximately 2 weeks after the course and be available for 2 months.

Teaching and structure

You can attend one, two or three days.

This course will be delivered online via Zoom.

Certificates and accreditation

In previous years, this course has been awarded 18 category 1 (external) CPD credits, and we anticipate this year’s course will be awarded the same number.

Learning outcomes

The course will help you:

• understand how to assess kidney donors and recipients, the critical features of surgical transplantation, tissue typing and the medical management of kidney transplant recipients
• gain up-to-date knowledge of acute developments in the clinical management of transplantation and its complications
• evaluate real cases of donor and recipient assessment, cross-matching and infectious complications of transplantation
• critically reflect on ways to improve current practice and the patient pathway

Costs and concessions

The fees for three days are: 

• Consultants: £120
• Trainees: £100

The fees per day are:

• Consultants: £60
• Trainees: £50

The 3-day fee for NHS transplant nursing staff/transplant co-ordinators is: £50

Delegates from Lower Middle-Income Countries (LMICs):  3-day fee: £25.00*

*To be eligible for the LMIC fee rate you should be working or studying at an institution in one of the countries listed here. This is a list of countries with low-income or middle-income economies. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) compiles this information and revises it every three years.

Partners

Course team

Dr Mark Harber

Mark is Honorary Senior Lecturer at UCL Department of Renal Medicine, Royal Free and Consultant Nephrologist at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. He has a specialist interest in transplantation. His research interests include the immune system, infectious diseases and transplantation, urinary tract infection and acute kidney injury.

Mr Neal Dugal

Neal is a Consultant Transplant and Endocrine Surgeon, Honorary Associate Professor in the UCL Department of Renal Medicine, Royal Free, and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) University of Medicine and Health Sciences. His main clinical interests are renal transplantation, robotic surgery, and adrenal and retroperitoneal tumours. He was appointed as a Consultant Surgeon at the Royal Free in 2012, where he established the largest robot-assisted renal transplant programme in the U.K. allowing some patients deemed too large for open kidney transplantation to receive a live-donor transplant. He moved to Beaumont Hospital, Dublin in 2021. 

Dr Ciara Magee

Ciara is a Consultant Nephrologist at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin. Her research interests include the immunobiology of transplant rejection, transplant virology and ageing. She's co-editor of the Pocket Companion to Brenner and Rector’s 'The Kidney'. Ciara completed her postgraduate training in nephrology in Ireland, before undertaking a research fellowship in transplant immunology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston. She was awarded a PhD from Royal College Surgeons in Ireland in 2015.

Dr Gareth Jones

Gareth is a consultant nephrologist and transplant physician at UCL Department of Renal Medicine, Royal Free. He's been clinical lead of renal transplantation at the Royal Free since 2008. His areas of interest include living donation, incompatible renal transplantation and transplant of the diabetic recipient with either islet or solid organ pancreas transplant. After qualifying from St Bartholomew’s medical school in 1993, he completed his training in London and the South West. During his training, he completed a PhD in islet transplantation and helped establish the clinical islet transplant program at the Royal Free.

Dr Rhys Evans

Rhys is a newly appointed Consultant Nephrologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the UCL Department of Renal Medicine. He was an undergraduate at Cambridge University, undertook general nephrology training in London, and he subsequently completed a Fellowship in Transplantation at the University of British Columbia. He returned to the Royal Free in November 2021 where he works clinically as a transplant nephrologist. Rhys undertook his PhD at UCL under the supervision of Prof Alan Salama and Dr. Stephen Walsh.  His research is focused on the impact of the extracellular ionic environment on immune cell activation with a particular focus on changes in immunity that occur in states of altered sodium balance. He recently provided the first report of immunodeficiency in patients with Salt-Losing Tubulopathy. He has just received funding to explore the effect of sodium on the alloimmune response.

Prof Reza Motallebzadeh

Reza Motallebzadeh was educated at Westminster School, London and completed the pre-clinical and clinical Medical Sciences Tripos at St. John's College, University of Cambridge. Reza initially trained as a specialist registrar in cardiothoracic surgery in London, and undertook a research MD at St. George’s Hospital, London University. Reza was always fascinated by immunology and subsequently pursued a career in abdominal transplantation surgery. He completed a PhD (2008-2011) in the Department of Surgery, University of Cambridge, to understand the role of tertiary lymphoid organs in chronic allograft rejection, and then, as a NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer, his work focused on the role of germinal centre B cells in alloantibody-mediated rejection. Reza joined the Royal Free London NHS Trust as Honorary Consultant Renal Transplant Surgeon and Associate Professor, University College London in September 2017. He is currently Professor of Renal Transplantation, Head of Centre for Transplantation in the Department of Renal Medicine, and Deputy Head, Centre for Surgical Innovation, Organ Repair and Transplantation, Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, UCL.

Course information last modified: 24 Jul 2023, 15:44