The Renal Pathology Society held a Board of Directors meeting at 6.45-7.45AM on Thursday November 15th, 2006 during the annual ASN meeting at the Marriott Hotel & Marina in San Diego, CA.

In attendance were: Bruijn, Liapis, Alpers, Fogo, Bonsib, Meleg-Smith, Seshan, Picken and Truong.
1.            Meeting was called to order by RPS President Jan Bruijn
2.            Previous RPS meeting minutes from USCAP in Atlanta, February 12, 2006 were approved with minor modifications
3.            President’s agenda for the current meeting was approved

RPS President Jan Bruijn invited BOD members to present their committee’s agenda.

International Committee: Surya Seshan

1. Update

Dr. Seshan stated that she is considering keeping the members of the international committee the same for next year. She reminded the BOD of the educational needs on renal pathology in various parts of the world and suggested to post such conferences in the RPS website and provide a link if possible.

Nominating & Awards: Lorraine Racusen was not in attendance

Dr. Bruijn as the incoming chair of the nominations and awards committee announced the Pirani awardees for 2006: Rob de Lind van Wijngaarden, Idske Kremer Hovinga and Marije Koopmans from the Netherlands. These 3 individuals are mentored by Dr. Ingeborg Bajema, and each has an oral presentation at the ASN.
Based on a nomination by Dr. Robert Colvin, the committee also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Robert McCluskey.  Dr. Colvin presented the award to him a few weeks before his death, and reports that he much appreciated the award.
New committee members: Drs Volker Nickeleit and Lois Arend will be serving this committee in 2007. Dr Bruijn asked the BOD to consider announcing the Pirani travel award twice/year to include the USCAP 2007.
He also invited the BOD to submit names for 2007 councilors to be put on the ballot and suggestions were submitted.
Financial committee: Luan Truong

1. Dr. Truong found the society’s expenses and balance sheet in order.
2. It was suggested that tax-deductible donations to the society at the end of the year may be encouraged to increase the funds for various awards sponsored by the RPS.
3. The RPS secretary has submitted our logo to the US patents office so that we can Trade mark it. The logo is an original, drawn by Charles Jennette, some years back. It takes about six months to complete the process. The cost: $375.
4. An online account for RPS members to renew their membership was discussed. The RPS paid the bank >$1,678 in processing fees. An online account may save the society some money. It was agreed to proceed to establish an online account.

Communications & Publications: Suzanne Meleg-Smith
The RPS website is continuously updated, the moment the committee receives the information that is to be posted.  In order to have up-to-date info, all committee chairs are invited to submit changes or additions relating to their activities ASAP, especially immediately before and after RPS meetings, when the website is at its highest use.

In the past we agreed that a manual of operations would be useful and should be posted on the website.  At present, only 2 committees – Communications and Membership- have posted this info.  Do all/most committees want to place a manual on the internet or do we want to remove the page? All agreed to keep it as is.

Education & Scientific: Ian Roberts, chair, was not in attendance

1. KUFA satellite took place at the IAP in Montreal, Sept '06 and it was a success
2. Over 50 members attended. The fee offset most of the cost (see attached report)
3. On KUFA grants it was decided to award two grants of $5,000 each. Deadline for submission is January 15th, 2007. Decisions will be made by end of February 2007. Final report is due end of February 2008. Applications will be reviewed by the KUFA grants committee composed of Drs Cook, Truong and Seshan.
4. Surya Seshan commented on KUFA money for the RPS satellite meeting and suggested that unless we are seen as valuable to KUFA’s mission, they may not fund us in the future. Steve Bonsib would like to study KUFA’s agenda further.
5. Steve Bonsib discussed the upcoming 30 year celebration from the founding of the renal club. He is chairing this event and intents to form a subcommittee to help him with the program.

Satellite meeting balance sheet

Membership committee: Maria M. Picken MD, PhD, Chair
Members: Ingeborg M. Bajema MD, PhD, Franco Ferrario MD
            - Between the last USCAP meeting (February 2006) and November 10th 2006,                            29 new members have been welcomed into our Society and two members             became emeritus (attached).                                                           

1. A $25 annual fee for members from Romania was proposed and accepted by the BOD.
2. The question whether delinquent members and or emeritus members are eligible to vote was brought up. It was suggested the emeritus members should vote and our bylaws should be clear on this when next modified.

Program: Charles Alpers

1. Dr. Alpers presented the full program (attached).
2. For the ASN 2007 Sharon Adler a nephrologist from Cedar Sinai in LA will represent the RPS to the ASN program committee chaired by John Sedor. The RPS president elect, Dr. Bonsib was advised to start early in getting an RPS member in the next (2008) ASN program committee.
3. This committee’s task is also to provide programming suggestions for Clinical Nephrology Conferences to the ASN Postgraduate Education Committee. As such, suggestions were provided to Cindy Nast for the 2007 meeting, but whether any of these will be accepted will not be determined until the spring of next year.

USCAP 2007: Dr. Alpers (chair) and Drs Carine Peutz-Kootstra, Carmen Avila (members) worked on the following program:
            "From Bedside to Bench and Back Again: What Animal Models Teach us about             Renal Disease, and What They Don't"
                  Moderators: Charles E. Alpers, University of Washington, Seattle, WA and
            Stephen M. Bonsib, Louisiana State University, Shreveport, LA
 Immune and Inflammatory Glomerular Injury
H. Terence Cook, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK
Renal Fibrosis and Progressive Renal Injury
Agnes B. Fogo, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
-Break
 The Various Injuries of the Podocyte
Vivette D'Agati, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY
Paradigms in Diabetic Nephropathy
S. Michael Mauer, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN


Research: Terry Cook

1. Dr. Cook was flying in bad weather and could not attend the BOD. His report is attached.

Report of the RPS Research Committee November 2006

1. The chairman wrote to all the members at the beginning of the year explaining the purpose of the Research Committee and asking whether there were any ideas for new studies or any studies that the Committee could help facilitate. No replies were received
2. The projects that the committee has been involved in are:
1. Classification of IgA nephropathy in conjunction with the International IgA nephropathy network. The pathologists involved met at the USCAP meeting in Atlanta and spent a day discussing definitions and score sheets. Since then a first round of slide circulation has taken place with each case scored by 3 pathologists. The circulations are being coordinated by Ian Roberts. The plan is to circulate 300 slides before analysing the results. The chairman spoke on the progress of the project at the 11th International Symposium on IgA nephropathy in Tokyo in October. A brief meeting to review progress will be held at the San Diego ASN meeting
2. A group consisting of the chairman of the research committee together with Surya Seshan and Luan Truong will manage the allocation of 2 RPS-KUFA grants of $5000 each
3. A questionnaire has been circulated to all members asking about their use of the ISN/RPS lupus classification and what problems they find. The results will be fed back to the membership. Terry Cook, Jan Weening and Vivette D’Agati will analyse the results and consider whether it is appropriate to suggest revisions to the classification in the light of this
3. Other projects that the Committee has considered but that are not yet in progress are A) classification of diabetic nephropathy; B) a multi-centre study of the use of repeat biopsies in lupus nephritis; C) a study of recurrent dense deposit disease in renal transplants.

Training programs: Agnes Fogo

1. Dr Fogo discussed the UK based on line quiz and case presentation program as a potential evaluation program for renal pathologists around the world (see attachment below). She stated that this program would be difficult to implement outside the UK and she does not support such an idea.
2. Dr Fogo gave an account of the renal pathology fellowships that are currently accredited; these include Hopkins (accredited), Vanderbuilt (provisional) and Seattle (will be inspected in January 2007). Accreditation appears to depend heavily on the overall quality of the general program.
3. The new chair for this committee for 2007 is Bob Colvin

Report from Renal Pathology Society Training Committee
November  2006

1) Competency/certification
The members of the committee, Drs. Bob Colvin, Vivette D'Agati, and Agnes Fogo have discussed the charge from the President, namely to review possible assessment of competency and certification by the Renal Pathology Society. After much discussion, this committee feels that there are inherent problems implying certification or competency with any of a variety of programs that could be implemented. The committee proposed to discuss this at the members' meeting, and potentially, based on feedback, survey the membership for additional comments on this issue. In addition, information from the UK Renal Pathology Group is of interest in terms of their experience with slide review, and will be shared at the business meeting. Information from Dr. Peter Furness who heads this effort is provided below:

Information from Dr. Furness on the UK's Renal Pathology External Quality Assessment Scheme:
The website is at
 http://www.le.ac.uk/iii/pnf1/eqa/
 with a 2-page summary of what they do at
http://www.le.ac.uk/iii/pnf1/eqa/paeqa.html

and detailed Standard Operating Procedures at
 http://www.le.ac.uk/iii/pnf1/eqa/paesop.html
Both these documents include a description of the scoring methods and the procedures for handling sub-standard individual performance, and the 'certificate of participation' which is produced.  This can (at least in theory...) be checked during our laboratory accreditation process.
(I also have copies of the User's Manuals for the software Dr. Furbness wrote, which show the sort of feedback that participants receive.)
In the 1990s Dr. Furness wrote a more general description of how such schemes should operate in histopathology which is still available on the Royal College of Pathologists website,
http://www.rcpath.org/resources/pdf/G012-RecsForDevpmtOfHisto-CytoEQASchemes
.pdf
This formed the basis of how all histopathology EQA schemes run in the UK. Dr. Furness thinks there is now 100% participation of diagnostic histopathologists in some form of EQA scheme in the UK.
However, despite the existence of a personal performance surveillance element, the EQA schemes are primarily educational.  Correction tends to be self-correction.  Despite running the renal scheme for 15 years, Dr. Furness has never got through the 'sub-standard performance' protocol beyond the first 'Dear Colleague...' letter.  The response to that has usually been either rapid improvement, or a letter explaining that the participant had only been seeing a handful of renal biopsies and would now transfer them all to a nearby specialist for reporting. So this may or may not be relevant to certification/ recertification. In the UK our Chief Medical Officer has just published some controversial proposals on that, and arguments are ongoing, so the UK probably is not yet in the best state to be looked on as a good example! If someone outside the UK wants to set up something comparable to this EQA systems, Dr. Furness says he will be happy to assist.  The response analysis software is now ageing, but free.

 2) ACGME
In addition, the ACGME has recently completed its inspection of the Renal Pathology Fellowship Program at Vanderbilt, and the preliminary report from the inspector was quite favorable. The ACGME soon will forward special forms for the special pathology programs under which Renal Pathology falls. At present, the existing forms are not applicable, and programs freelance to produce information, that may or may not meet guidelines. Dr. Fogo will be happy to share any information from the program information package produced or other details of the inspection, for any other fellowship programs that may interact with the ACGME.

Respectfully submitted,
Agnes Fogo

New RPS members

Our current membership stands at 371.  Recent updates include: Helmut Rennke sponsored 4 new members, Surya Seshan and Maria M. Picken 3 new members each, Sally Self, Luis Salinas-Madrigal, Helen Liapis, Ingeborg Bajema and Andrew Herzenberg 2 new members each; the remaining colleagues each sponsored one new member.
From N. America there are 265 members (US: 242)
S. America –8
Europe – 60 (UK: 16, Holland: 15)
Australia – 3
Asia –33 (India: 12)