The Kidney at a Glance contains a state of the art coverage of the field of renal science, renal medicine and the key areas of internal and general or family medicine which involve the kidney, hypertension and fluid and electrolyte balance.

Although the kidney is often thought of as a specialised organ of interest to only a small number of hospital doctors and nurses, this is far from the truth. In reality, the kidney plays a major role in much of the work of all health care workers including non renal hosiptal doctors and nurses and doctors and nurses in family or general practice as well as many other health care providers. The kidney plays a key role in some of the most important conditions in clinical practice such as hypertension, heart failure, edema and urinary tract infection. The most frequent blood tests performed in hospital are those which indicate renal disease or malfunction such as blood elecrolytes and creatinine, urea or BUN (blood urea nitrogen). Even in high dependency or intensive care units, renal medicine is central to the care of most patients.

Despite the central role that the kidney and renal medicine and science play in the modern practice of health care provision, there is often a poor understanding of the subject which sadly can lead to poor patient care. This book aims to present the subject in a way which has not been done before using explanatory diagrams and clear explanations which should demystify the subject and allow all who need to understand it to do so.

The book itself is divided into five sections and the website also follows this pattern. The chapter summaries and self-assessment exercises on this website are designed to help the reader study and understand the material presented.

Students should certainly start with the chapters in the "Introduction" section.

If you have no interest in the clinical sections then just try reading Chapters 1 and 2 to get an overview of what the kidney is and what it does - you should then read through the "Basic renal science" section..

If you are only interested in clinical aspects of the kidney, you should still read Chapters 1 and 2 as they form the basis for much of the rest of the subject and the book.

The "Basic renal science" section deals with the basis of much of our understanding of the kidney. Do not be put off by the details, examine the diagrams and try to get an overview of the way the kidney works. The keypoints are summarised clearly on the webpages for each chapter and the self-assessment exercises are designed to help explore and explain the subject. You should try to refer back to the "Basic renal science" section when reading the more clinically relevant sections later in the book.

I n general, more advanced readers interested in a specific clinical sections of the book can go direct to clinical topic in the third and fourth sections "Disorders of renal metabolic function" and "Renal disease processes." However, in many cases, it will make sense for such readers to quickly revise the relevant section from the first and second sections "Introduction" and "Basic Renal Science."

More advanced readers who wish to generally update their knowledge of the subject could examine the "Basic renal science" sections to see which subjects they wish to review and then proceed to the relevant chapters in the next two sections "Disorders of renal metabolic function" and "Renal disease processes."

All the chapters have been designed so that the key information is already in the diagrams and the website contains keypoint summaries for all the chapters as well as detailed teaching questions with explanatory answers. .

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C. A. O'Callaghan 2004