Preview: The Primary Care Approach to the Patient With Chronic Kidney Disease

In this video, James J. Matera, DO, provides a preview of his session "A Primary Care Approach to CKD Management" at our Practical Updates in Primary Care 2022 Virtual Series on May 12, including the primary care clinician’s role in caring for a patient with chronic kidney disease and collaborating with the nephrologist.

James J. Matera, DO, FACOI, is a practicing nephrologist, Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs, and Chief Medical Officer at CentraState Medical Center (Freehold, New Jersey).

For more meeting coverage, visit the Practical Updates in Primary Care newsroom.

Visit the PUPC 2022 Virtual Series website for the full meeting agenda and registration information.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Dr James Matera: My name is Dr Jim Matera. I am a nephrologist and currently the Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer at CentraState Hospital and affiliate of Atlantic Healthcare here in New Jersey. My topic at this year's seminar is going to be based around primary care approach to the patient with chronic kidney disease. And I know that scares a lot of primary care docs. So some of the things I want to discuss are what is the primary care's role in caring for the chronic kidney disease patient and how to get you feeling a little bit more comfortable understanding the differences and things that you have to look out for. The second thing that I think is great, is that we're seeing a great influx of medications. For example, we'll talk a little bit about the SGLT2 inhibitors and their impact in primary care and chronic kidney disease and how important those things are.

And then the last approach that I'm going to look at is how to collaborate better with your nephrologist. A lot of times, we'll see and we'll show some data in my presentation that there's a disconnect between the nephrologist and the primary care, and that elevates to a barrier for the patient care. And I think there are ways we can break down these barriers. A lot of times, we all get lost with communication. But nephrology in particular, primary care docs don't seem to have fantastic working relationships. And I'm going to give some pointers. And we're also going to talk a little bit about some of the controversies. We know that there are controversies in how GFR is measured and who really has chronic kidney disease. So those are the topics that I'm going to be presenting at my conference. And I think it'll hopefully ease a lot of fears for the primary care docs when they're taking care of their chronic kidney disease patients and to foster better relationships between your consultant