ERKNet Reference Center

Institution

Barcelona, Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron

Center

Barcelona Hospital Universitari Vall d' Hebron, Service of Pediadric Nephrology

Description

The Pediatric Nephrology Department is part of the University Hospital Vall d’Hebron (VHUH) located in Barcelona, a Tertiary referral public center for Catalunya and many other areas of Spain. The HUVH is integrated by a Women-Children, General, and Trauma-Orthopedics Teaching Hospitals providing a multidisciplinary care involving all pediatric and adult medical and surgical sub-specialties. We also work closely with the Pediatric Urology Service who is accredited as national reference service for complex urologic surgeries in children and adolescents.

In our Service, we provide advanced and specialized care for patients with kidney disease from prenatal age to adolescence. We are highly specialized in renal replacement therapies such as dialysis, extracorporeal procedures (plasmapheresis, immune-absorption, and other aphaeresis) and kidney transplantation. We provide patient care 24 hours, 365 days per year, with pediatric nephrologists and dialysis nurses on-call. Since 1981, we have performed more than 470 pediatric kidney transplantations and 23 combined transplants (liver-kidney transplants and heart-kidney transplants) including infants and also combined liver-kidney transplantation in our program. Our center is accredited as regional and national reference and expert center for rare kidney diseases, severe chronic kidney disease and dialysis in children, pediatric kidney transplantation and complex glomerular diseases.

Our team includes referent renal nurses, clinical research nurse and staff, dieticians, psychologists and social support among others.

We are compromised in a growing transition program from pediatric care to adult nephrology. The aim of transition is to empower adolescents, family members and patient advocacy groups for transferring medical care from the pediatric nephrology to adult nephrology service at the same institution.

Further, we are part of the Renal Physiopathology Group at the Vall d'Hebrón Research Institute (VHIR) (https://vhir.vallhebron.com/en/research/kidney-physiopathology), and rare kidney diseases. We are also founder members of RenalTube (http://renaltube.com/en/), a research network focused on improving diagnosis and knowledge of Primary Tubulopathies.

We participate in several clinical trials and academic research projects in the field of pediatric kidney and rare kidney diseases.

Team

Senior clinician experts
	Gema Ariceta (HCP Lead) [e-mail]
no image	Marino Asensio
	Victor Beltran Perez [e-mail]
no image	Gloria Fraga
no image	Romy Gander
no image	Marina Muñoz
no image	Gloria Royo
no image	Saskia-Natali Agamez [e-mail]
no image	Sara Chocron
Junior clinician experts
no image	Alejandro Cruz
no image	Héctor Ríos Duro [e-mail]
no image	Héctor Ríos Duro [e-mail]
no image	Gerson Berna [e-mail]
no image	Manuel Grana Vaqueiro [e-mail]
no image	Carmen Hernandez Larramendi [e-mail]
no image	Mercedes Lopez [e-mail]
no image	Maria Planella [e-mail]
Clinicians in training
no image	Diana Carolina Chacon Jaimes [e-mail]
no image	Iratxe Tapia Torrijos [e-mail]
Clinical research coordinators
no image	Jose Jarrin [e-mail]
no image	Scherezade Sarri
no image	Carla Soto [e-mail]