Renal medicine

The Sunderland Kidney Unit has been has been operating since 1970. The main unit has over 20 haemodialysis stations and dialyses over 150 patients on a three shifts system. There is an associated satellite unit at Durham Treatment Centre dialysing 60 patients and a 40 patients dialysing at Washington Primary Care Centre, The Galleries.

We follow up over 200 prevalent transplant patients and have an expanding home therapies population with around 20 peritoneal and 20 home haemo, dialysis patients. A full range of renal services is offered apart from renal transplant, which is performed at the regional transplant centre at Freeman Hospital.

The renal services cover a population of 750,000. Tertiary care is provided to University Hospital North Durham and South Tyneside Hospital. Weekly clinics, including nephrology and anaemia clinics, are carried out Durham Treatment Centre, South Tyneside Hospital and Washington Galleries.

The on-call consultant is available for renal advice via the switchboard 24/7, 365 days/year, for urgent advice.

Renal Ambulatory Care is ran in the Renal Unit at Sunderland Royal Hospital and is used for ambulatory assessment and treatment of patients. The following activities take place:

• Patient education and assessment
• Intravenous iron, blood transfusion and cyclophosphamide
• Rapid access for patients on  renal replacement therapy.

Becoming a Living Kidney Donor at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust 

If you want more information on becoming a Living Kidney Donor at our Trust please click here.