Chronic renal disease affects more and more Filipinos every year. Eventually leading to kidney failure, it is a crippling disease not only for the patient but also for the patient’s family, who spends thousands of pesos each week for dialysis and eventual transplant. Chronic renal disease cannot be cured; it can however be detected early so that with the proper treatment kidney failure may be prevented.

At the National Kidney and Transplant Institute are medical professionals, surgeons and support personnel committed to this cause. Combining the latest technology and the best training here and abroad, the Institute continues to serve the Filipino people. And with the Institute’s latest acquisition – the Electron-Filtering Transmission Electron Microscope (EFTEM) © – a new hope for our patients has dawned. Located at the Institute’s Department of Laboratory Medicine, the EFTEM is a combination of both old and new technology. Combining the time-tested technique of visual magnification using electrons instead of visible light with electron-filtering to enhance images dramatically, the EFTEM is a breakthrough in imaging technology. Furthermore, it will now allow the department’s own specialized Renal Pathologists to glimpse the ultrastructure of kidney biopsies and correlate it with Microscopy and Immunofluorescence, the standard of care in renal pathology diagnosis.

Since the Institute also treats diseases other than renal ailments, a versatile instrument as the EFTEM serves to augment the various specialties of its staff. The EFTEM is used as an adjunct in tumor diagnosis when Light Microscopy and Immunohistochemistry are not enough for a diagnosis. Visualization of the ultrastructure of tumor cells could uncover clues as to the tumor cells’ origin and nature. The EFTEM may be used as well in difficult skin pathologies. Lastly, the EFTEM’s capacity for elemental analysis leaves the area open to future researches in various medical and non-medical fields. This complements the presence of other technologically-advanced services in the Institute such as Flow Cytometry, Fluorescence In-Situ Hybridization, Molecular and Cellular Therapeutics, a hospital-based Virology lab, Polymerase Chain Reaction and DNA-based Tissue Typing.

The National Kidney and Transplant Institute. Treating the Filipino people for 25 years.