Introduction
The department of renal medicine was established in 2000 to focus on renal service development. The current renal service includes specialist renal inpatient facilities, specialist outpatient clinics at Queen’s and King George Hospitals and a renal biopsy and consults service. Local supporting services include nuclear medicine, vascular surgery, interventional radiology with renal biopsy, angiograms and angioplasty and a large urology service.
Patients with varying stages of chronic kidney disease are managed in the Queens’s renal and King George clinics. In patients are managed on the Renal team wards (Clementine A in Queen’s and Gentian in King George) where medical and renal patients are admitted for investigations and management.
An average of 50 native renal biopsies are performed each year with histological review on a weekly basis at the Royal London Hospital renal biopsy meeting. Although the majority of patients with acute renal failure are transferred to the Royal London Hospital for inpatient management, the intensive care unit at Oldchurch hospital provided haemofiltration treatment for 63 patients during the period from 1.1.2006 to 13.11.2006 with a total support days of 388 and a mean days per patient of 6.1.
The Renal team supervise the training and education of the medical students and junior medical staff.
Renal Replacement Therapy at Barking Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Barts and The London NHS Trust working in partnership with Barking Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust applied for funding for an interim satellite dialysis unit at Harold Wood Hospital late in 2004. This was to provide essential extra haemodialysis capacity in the North East London Sector and to provide capacity in line with the North East London Renal Network’s investment plan, which envisaged an annual 8% growth in dialysis requirements in the Sector.
This application was successful and we were awarded £880,000 to convert an existing unused ward at Harold Wood into an 18 station satellite dialysis unit. A project Team was established and the new unit was commissioned and refurbished and opened to receive its first patients for dialysis on 11 April 2005. This unit has since been fully staffed and is now full to capacity providing haemodialysis treatment for 72 local patients from the North East London Sector. Medical cover is provided on an outreach basis with help from the existing nephrology Consultants at BHRT. This facility has now relocated to the new purposed built unit at the new Queen’s hospital.
Referrals
Nephrology and hypertension referrals should be sent to:
The Department of Renal medicine
Renal Dialysis Unit (Green Zone/Ground Floor)
Queen’s Hospital
Romford
RM7 0AG
Urgent referrals can be faxed to fax: 01798 504202