Message from the Chief

The National Kidney Foundation reports that an estimated 26 million American adults suffer from chronic kidney disease and millions more are at increased risk. Over the last decade, the number of inpatients cared for by nephrologists at The Mount Sinai Hospital has increased by more than 50 percent, and the division’s NIH funding has nearly tripled. Patients, funding agencies and trainees look to Mount Sinai because of our historic strengths in the field and our current record of achievement.

Alfred P. Fishman and Irving Kroop performed the first hemodialysis in the United States at Mount Sinai in 1947. Ten years later, Mount Sinai opened the first dialysis facility in New York, and in 1959 we established our outpatient kidney clinic. The growth of our dialysis program led to Mount Sinai’s establishment of a kidney transplant program, which is today one of the largest in the country. Our post-transplant survival rate is among the highest in the nation.

Mount Sinai’s Upper East Side location borders East Harlem, a community at increased risk for chronic kidney disease due to its high rate of obesity. Our division has created a program that approaches the disease from three perspectives: physician education, patient awareness, and diagnosis and intervention. We have also established an on-going community-based education and screening program.

Currently our division has one of the largest National Institutes of Health research budgets of any nephrology division. Our faculty are leading investigations in peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis, renal development, polycystic kidney disease, HIV-associated nephropathy, diabetic renal disease, glomerular disease, hypertensive renal disease, genetics and genomics, and transplant immunology.

The expertise of our faculty is evidenced by the frequency in which they are called upon to take leadership roles. I recently served as President of the American Society of Transplantation. 

Other members of the division who hold national leadership roles include Detlef Schlondorff, MD, Director of the Grants Program of the American Society of Nephrology; Joseph Vassalotti, MD, Chief Medical Office of the National Kidney Foundation; and Jonathan Winston, MD, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Kidney and Urology Foundation of America.

Our fellowship program, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009, has drawn some of the top trainees from prestigious residency programs. The caliber of our trainees is evidenced by the fact that our own training program is the first place we look for quality faculty. Over the last several years, many of our fellowship graduates have joined our ranks and have successfully sought NIH funding.

I invite you to learn more about our division and faculty members. From our impressive history to the cutting edge science and medicine we perform today, the Division of Nephrology is in a position to succeed for decades to come.

Barbara Murphy, MD
Chief, Division of Nephrology