ISPD President 2024-2026 Rajnish Mehrotra (USA)

Prof Rajnish Mehrotra has worked to improve the lived experience of patients with kidney failure through his work as a clinician, a researcher, and an educator. He has long advocated for empowering patients to be the determining voice in selecting the dialysis modality for treating kidney failure. With his clinical work, he has advanced the cause by focusing primarily on increasing access to home dialysis for patients from socio-economically disadvantaged and historically marginalized communities, including immigrants. He has overseen the establishment of large home dialysis programs at two different institutions that serve the underserved. His early research focused on identifying barriers to home dialysis in the United States, highlighting the central importance of non-medical factors. He demonstrated that by the turn of the last century, outcomes with PD had been improving faster than those with HD such that the long-term survival with the two therapies were similar. The US government cited much of this early work when they increased financial incentives to support greater access to home dialysis. More recently, he has worked on advancing our understanding of the relationship between genetic variation and the biology of the peritoneum as it pertains to PD. For this, the Bio-PD study, he brought together researchers from 70 centers in 6 countries/regions of the world and has led the first genome-wide association studies for solute and fluid removal with PD. As an educator, he has worked to change the paradigm of PD care – that it is a therapy for some patients, by some physicians, for some time. He has taught in nearly 40 Peritoneal/Home Dialysis Universities since 2002 and co-chaired the ASN In-Depth Course on Maintenance Dialysis for six years. He has served the ISPD in various roles since 2004 – as Chair of various committees (Membership, 2004-’06; Education, 2010-’14; Standards and Guidelines, 2020-’24), member of the Council (2006-’10), and Treasurer (2014-’16). He has also served as the President of the North American Chapter (2015-’17), co-chaired the Scientific Organizing Committee of the recently concluded ISPD Congress in Dubai, and was a member of organizing committee for four prior congresses. He is the proud holder of the Belding Scribner Endowed Chair and leads the division of nephrology at the University of Washington, where much of the early work in advancing PD was done – including the introduction of Tenckhoff catheter.