Efficacy of an educational programme for secondary school students on opinions on renal transplantation and organ donation: a randomized controlled trial.

Context: Organ shortage for transplantation is a crucial problem; educational interventions may increase donations and decrease opposition.

Objective: To test the efficacy of an educational programme on opinions on organ transplantation and kidney donation.

Design And Participants: Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial: eight intervention and eight control schools were randomly selected from the 33 public schools that agreed to participate.

Teenagers' point of view on living donor kidney transplantation: Cinderella or princess?

Unlabelled: Living kidney donation is an important clinical option, encountering different fortunes in the world.

Aim: To analyse the opinions of a large subset of older teenagers attending high school (7999 students, median age 18) on different aspects of living kidney transplantation.

Methods: Analysis of semistructured questionnaires submitted within an educational campaign on dialysis and transplantation in the high schools of Torino and its county (about 2,000,000 inhabitants).

Lost to follow-up: the bottleneck of early referral to renal units?

Background: Early referral is a major goal in chronic kidney diseases; however, loss to follow-up, potentially limiting its advantages, has never been studied.

Material/methods: In order to assess the prevalence and causes of loss to follow-up, a telephone inquiry was performed in a renal outpatient unit, mainly dedicated to early referral of diabetic patients. Patients were considered to be in follow-up if there was at least one check-up in the period February 2001-February 2002, and lost to follow-up if the last check-up had occurred in the previous year.