News updates

Welcome to our first website newsletter.  In an attempt to save trees, we have put this one on the website but it also means you can directly navigate from here to some of the links. 

New network coordinator

We are delighted to welcome Kayleigh Boyles as our new network administrator.  This is her first EMEESY annual meeting.  Please give her an EMEESY-warm welcome when you see her, and please be gentle with her as she gets up to speed with all the facets of the job!  She's hoping to come out to visit all of the centres over the next year and so we'll be in touch about coordinating the dates so she can meet all the key admin staff in your centre. 

Other changes to Nottingham staff

We're delighted to have some new and reallocated colleagues in Nottingham over the last year.

Since April, we have been very pleased to have Dr Ash Patel with us as a locum consultant.  You may recognise his face from smiling out at you from the RCPCH Milestones magazine enticing yuo to take up home baking!  He covers patients and clinics in Doncaster, Bassetlaw and Rotherham.  In Nottingham, he is part of the haemodialysis and low clearance teams.  

Dr Frances Massey has now been in post as our clinical psychologist for a year and is supporting children and families with psychological and emotional health needs related to their kidney disease.  

Within the CKD teams there has been some movement in the last year.  We welcomed back to the team Molly McLaughlin, formerly critical care educator and now returned as Home Therapies Lead Nurse.  We also welcome Hannah Sneath to the specialist nursing team.  Hannah remains as a junior ward sister for a day a week but for the majority of her time is now a CKD Specialist Nurse supporting Kate Baker. 

After almost 50 years working as a nurse, Kim Helm retired earlier this year.  Within the transplant team, she has been replaced by Sharon Mould who has been part of the specialist nurse team for many years working in home support, haemodialysis and PD. 

New SPIN faces

We are also very pleased to have two new SPIN colleagues, Dr Mohamed (Aaqib) Naeem in Leicester and Dr Vivian Kwon in Kettering.  

Nephrotic clinic

Last month, we started a monthly nephrotic clinic in Nottingham.  Three consultants, Andy Lunn, JJ Kim and Martin Christian will provide the medical input, sharing care in the same way as with the CKD teams. Monique Burgin will provide the specialist nurse support.  There is the option for exising Nottingham patients looked after by other consultants to move over to the clinic; all newly-diagnosed children in Nottingham will be followed-up in this clinic going forward.  We plan to have a monthly MDT to discuss patients seen in clinic and, in the near future, to open this up to discussion of patients with complex nephrotic syndrome seen around the EMEESY network. 

We also plan to include some specific resources for nephrotic syndrome on the website.  Keep your eyes out for these! 

Updated CKD guidelines

Earlier this year we updated the CKD guidelines.  There is a new section on the timing of initiation of kidney replacement therapy.  In Nottingham, we hold a monthly MDT where children with eGFR <10 but not on dialysis or transplanted are discussed so that a whole team decision to continue conservative management is taken and documented.  Whilst these will be of less relevance to the children with CKD seen in network clinics, you may be interested to know of the changes.  The new guidelines can be accessed from the guidelines page. 

Research updates

Many of you will have helped find suitable children for the EMPA-kids study of empagliflozin (SGLT2i) in children with proteinuric CKD.  The trial has closed ahead of expections, which is good news globally although it happened before we were able to recruit anyone. 

We have recently opened for the LIMITS study of capped versus standard (liberal) fluid replacement for children following kidney transplantation.  This is a UK multi-centre study, led by Wes Hayes. 

We may have discussed the HiyaPKD study with you, which is aimed at teenagers who have first degree relatives (parents or siblings) with ADPKD.  They will be offered a one-stop clinic to do genotyping along with scanning and other testing of blood pressure and cardiovascular effects.  We will no longer open in Nottingham but plan to refer children to other centres in London or Manchester.  The study recruits via the PKD website so PIC status isn't needed to recruit.  If you have interested families, please direct them to the PKD website. 

Website updates

Whilst updated more than a year ago, there is a range of mental health resources to support parents, teenagers, younger children and schools that Frances helped to update.  Our sense is that they are not used very much and perhaps this is because they aren't known about. 

The latest flu vaccine advice has been updated for the 2026-27 season.  Thanks to Drew Maxted for this. 

More website developments are planned for the next year.  We are always keen to hear your views about anything you would like to see developed, or even when there are errors.  Please do continue to let us know when the guideline links break.  Every time there is a guideline update this unfortunately happens but the main NUH guideline link is on the page as a back-up to access utnil we can repair the link. Please email Kayleigh on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with any website issues. 

The Nottingham Kinder Crew had another very successful Transplant Games in Sheffield this summer.  You can read about their achievements and see photos of them in action on the website too.