Focused renal sonography performed and interpreted by internal medicine residents.

Objectives: Intensivist-performed focused sonography, including renal sonography, is becoming accepted practice. Whether internal medicine residents can be trained to accurately rule out renal obstruction and identify sonographic findings of chronic kidney disease is unknown. The purpose of this study was to test the ability of residents to evaluate for this specific constellation of findings.

Massive intravascular hemolysis with mechanical rheolytic thrombectomy of a hemodialysis arteriovenous fistula.

A 57-year-old man with chronic kidney disease stage 5 presented for ambulatory evaluation of his arteriovenous fistula. He underwent rheolytic thrombectomy with tissue plasminogen activator infusion, angioplasty, and brachial artery stenting under local sedation. His immediate postoperative course was complicated by hypotension, cardiac dysrhythmias and hyperkalemia requiring emergent hemodialysis, due to severe intravascular hemolysis.