ABSTRACT
The history of the Russian nephrology community dates back to the early 1960s. In 1965, the first kidney transplantation from a living related donor was performed in Moscow. The territory of Russia covers more than 17 million square kilometers —about one-seventh of the world’s land massand is home to about 145 million people. Kidney transplantation is especially important in the North, East Siberian, and Far East regions of Russia, where population density is low, and hemodialysis units are lacking or too far away. Peritoneal dialysis treatment is most expensive in these remote areas, since the severity of the climate often makes it difficult to transport dialysis solutions. Russian patients on renal replacement therapy (RRT) differ in many respects from RRT patients in Europe and the United States. Younger to begin with, they also show a different pattern of end-stage renal disease causes, due, for the most part, to the lack of hemodialysis stations.
