CRRT Expert to Deliver Address on Electrolyte Abnormalities

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Ashita Tolwani, MD, MSc

Citation: Kidney News 12, 10/11

The title of the Burton D. Rose, MD, Endowed Lectureship will be “Managing Electrolyte Abnormalities on Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy (CRRT).” The speaker will be Ashita Tolwani, MD, MSc, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). The lecture is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 22.

“My research focus is on the clinical aspects of CRRT in the treatment of acute kidney injury in the ICU and more specifically with the use of citrate anticoagulation,” Dr. Tolwani said. “UAB has been a pioneering research institution in CRRT. We currently have 25 CRRT machines providing over 5000 patient-days of treatment a year. There is even a group in Australia that has named their anticoagulation protocol, ‘The Modified Alabama Protocol,’ based on the protocol that was developed at UAB.”

Dr. Tolwani has performed extensive clinical outcomes research in AKI and CRRT, with a particular focus on citrate anticoagulation. She is the director of ICU nephrology at UAB and heads the CRRT program. She organizes an annual UAB CRRT academy for trainees, practicing physicians, and nurses from across the United States. She also teaches CRRT courses nationally and internationally.

Dr. Tolwani completed a combined nephrology and critical care fellowship. “Doing a combined fellowship allowed me the opportunity to handle a little bit of everything in internal medicine and still be able to do many procedures that attracted me to critical care in the first place,” she said. “With this I have been able to find my academic niche in ICU nephrology that has allowed for many new career opportunities.”

Dr. Tolwani directed the UAB nephrology fellowship program from 2002 to 2010 and is now associate program director.

She serves on the editorial boards of CJASN and Kidney International Reports. She is co-course director of the ASN critical care nephrology pre-course; is on the organizing committee of the Acute Kidney Injury and CRRT International Conference on Advances in Critical Care Nephrology; and is a workgroup member of the ASN initiative, AKI!Now: Promoting Excellence in the Prevention and Treatment of Acute Kidney Injury.

She received her medical degree from the UAB School of Medicine, where she also completed her internal medicine residency and nephrology fellowship. She became a faculty member in 1999. She also has a master’s in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.

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