[Patients treated by peritoneal dialysis: a heterogeneous group of patients. Profile of PD patients].

Often, one gathers together under the denomination "peritoneal dialysis" patients with various clinical profiles. To quantify this "heterogeneity" we analysed the clinical characteristics of 32,975 patients treated by dialysis at 31 December 2008 in 22 French regions, participating to the REIN registry. This cross-sectional study confirms our initial hypothesis of a great heterogeneity of patients' profiles in peritoneal dialysis.

[Why and how to measure cardiovascular risk?].

In cardiovascular medicine, the absolute risk is the observed incidence of events over a defined period of time. The relative risk is the multiplicative factor or risk factor. The cardiovascular global risk is multifactorial but is usually difficult to assess without a predictive model derived from large scale epidemiological studies such as Framingham cohort.

[Modes of clinical presentation of glomerular diseases].

There are various modes of presentation of glomerular diseases. Patients may present with edema or hypertension, isolated proteinuria, asymptomatic microhematuria or recurrent gross hematuria, nephrotic syndrome, acute nephritic syndrome, or rapidly progressive renal insufficiency. We focus on the anti-proteinuric treatment, on the complications and symptomatic management of the nephrotic syndrome, and on the early diagnosis of rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis.