Edwin Castillo

How did the ISN enable you to advance kidney health in your home country?

ISN supported all strategies to reduce the gap between problem and solution in vascular access because in Perú the rate of AVF was very low. From theory to practice, we started with the creation of the Peruvian Association of Vascular Access to promote multidisciplinary integration from an academic perspective and the congress were endorsed by ISN. Then, we began the integration efforts in one of the main hospital in Peru. We promoted communication between nephrology with interventional radiology. Share clinical case webinars and discussions with many experts of the world, able us to reach a high level of integration. One consequence of this work was start as the interventional nephrology regional training center by ISN. It was hard work with vascular surgery when we started to make echography Doppler for all patients and planning AVF. Besides, they were reluctant to create AVFn. In this process, we did a course to create AVFn by nephrology through the program of educational ambassador endorsement by ISN. The final evolution of this process was an integration with vascular surgery and interventional radiology, increase of AVFn creation by vascular surgeons and improvement in the flow of planning AVFn, because, from the beginning the focus was centered on patient.

What does the future look like?

Multidisciplinary focus on vascular access. Now, we are strengthen the level of integration with vascular surgery to reach the same level of discussion than interventional radiology . We will promote a new phase of clinical case webinars and reply our experience in the rest of the country. Is important to join the theory and practice aspects.