So hello and welcome back to this Small Animal Clinical Podcast series, brought to you from the Royal Veterinary College in London. My name is Shailen Jassani.

Today it's my great pleasure to welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Roseanne Jepson.

Rosanne, you will remember, is a diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and a lecture in internal medicine at the

RVC's Queen Mother Hospital for Animals. So thanks very much, Rosanne, for agreeing to

take part in yet another podcast. So today, I'd like to discuss something which is a pretty big

problem that affects many dogs and cats, and that is chronic

kidney disease, or at times we'll refer to it as KD. This is obviously a pretty big topic,

and so we're going to try and cover it in two separate podcasts. Today in part one, we'll talk about

some of the more theoretical information, some physiology, some pathology, that kind of thing. And then in part two, which we'll talk about some of the more theoretical information, some physiologies, some

pathology, that kind of thing. And then in part two, which we'll publish at a later date,

we will focus more on the sort of clinical aspects of the management of those patients.

So as always, I'd like to start with the basics really by asking if you could please

remind us about the kind of basic anatomy and functions of the kidneys, please.

Sure, Shailen.

So the kidney is an organ that has many different important functions.

Obviously, we think of it mainly in terms of producing or getting rid of waste products,

excreting things through the urine.

But it's also important from a homeostatic point of view in terms of regulating blood pressure,

acid base regulation, and also it's an important site for production of erythropewitetin which obviously we need for the bone marrow to produce red blood cells.

So there are lots of different important functions for the kidneys.

And then in terms of the anatomy of the kidney, well it's quite complex.

We have an outer cortex and an inner medulla.

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