The Eight EFCC Continuous Postgraduate Course in Clinical Chemistry: New Trends in Classification, Diagnosis and Management of Kidney Disease

The Croatian Society of Medical Biochemists and Slovenian Association for Clinical Chemistry, together with the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFCC), have organized the eight in a series of postgraduate weekend courses under the auspices of IFCC. The Course entitled "New Trends in Classification, Diagnosis and Management of Kidney Diseases" promotes continuing postgraduate education of professionals in clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine, and ensures the laboratory knowledge harmonization, this time on kidney disease in particular.

Renowned experts covering the clinical and laboratory aspects of kidney diseases presented integrated knowledge in handbook for Course participants. At the same time this valuable educational material has been published in eJIFCC for the readers from all over the world. The content of Handbook is divided into three chapters according to the Course program. The chapter Basic Concepts covers topics such as Pathophysiology and classification of kidney diseases, Inflammation, cytokines and chemokines in chronic kidney disease, Podocyte injury in glomerular diseases, and Kidneys and autoimmune disease. In the chapter Diagnosis procedure in nephrology, Hereditary kidney disorders, Diabetic nephropathy, Drug-induced kidney injury, Dislipidemia at chronic renal failure, GFR - where are we now? and Cardiovascular risk in chronic kidney disease are presented. The last chapter is dedicated to New approach to diagnosis and management, where Laboratory standards in the diagnosis and monitoring of therapy, The urinary proteomics: a tool to discover new and potent biomarkers for kidney damage, Point-of-care creatinine testing in high-risk patients and Recent approaches to therapy: is there real progress? are presented.

We do hope that the content of this handbook meets the intended goals by presenting the state-of-the-art, contributing to harmonization of new trends in the classification, diagnosis and management of kidney diseases.

Elizabeta Topić