Improving safety of kidney biopsies at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital

A study at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital aims to reduce the risk of bleeding during kidney biopsy and improve patient outcomes.

Every year, hundreds of Australians require a kidney biopsy to test for medical conditions that may impair kidney function.

Unfortunately, kidney biopsies carry risks from minor to severe bleeding, which can result in one in 1000 patients needing their kidney removed due to the excessive bleeding.

Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital kidney registrar Dr Monica Ng is working to improve the safety of kidney biopsies at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.

Thanks to a Queensland Health Clinical Research Fellowship from the Queensland Government, Dr Ng is completing a study titled ‘Reduce Complications Associated with Nephrological Tests (RECANT)’.

“The goal is to develop a new non-invasive test that we can use to better identify people who are more likely to have complications after a kidney biopsy,” Dr Ng said.

Factors which can deem a patient higher risk include kidney fibrosis or kidney scarring. Currently, there is no reliable, non-invasive test to work out how much scarring is present in a kidney or how much irreversible kidney damage there is before taking a biopsy.

The RECANT study involves developing a urine test that looks at tiny nanoparticles in the urine called extracellular vesicles.

“We know that different disease states in the kidney are associated with different types of these extracellular vesicles,” Dr Ng said.

“Ultimately, the goal of this work is to reduce the number of people who get bleeding complications after a kidney biopsy.”

Dr Ng also recently received the Shaun Summers Clinical Trainee Award at the Australia and New Zealand Society of Nephrology for her work on kidney transplant graft outcomes.

“We studied changes in graft failure rates of kidney transplant patients over the past 20 years,” Dr Ng said.

“This allowed us to provide patients with updated information about kidney transplant outcomes and highlighted areas which require more study, including looking at specific causes of graft failure over this time period.”