Advances in diagnostics and therapy of glomerular and tubulointerstitial renal diseases

Chronic glomerular and tubulointerstitial kidney diseases are still among important causes of end-stage renal failure. Modern diagnostics is very often based on the results of kidney biopsy. In this issue optimal conditions connected with good and reliable biopsy both technical and diagnostic are described. It is very important also to establish a national registry of renal biopsies based on unified diagnostic criteria. Simultaneously after clinico-pathological analysis common contemporary guidelines and algorithms based on the actual medical knowledge have to be widely used. Such guidelines and standards taken from a new book describing diagnosis and treatment of renal diseases are presented in this paper. These algorithms show the therapeutic rules valid in the treatment of both glomerular and tubulointerstitial kidney diseases. However, despite this causative therapy, also important is early identification of factors causing progression of chronic renal diseases followed by nonpharmacological and pharmacological nephroprotection.