Children's Kidney Patient Support Group
The emotional well-being of our patients with long-term kidney disease is important to us. Hence, we have set up a support group for these patients and their families, with the aims of enhancing their psychosocial adjustment and helping them to lead fulfilling lives despite their physical challenges.
Together with child life therapists, art therapists and psychologists, we help our young patients and their families understand and cope with their emotions and anxiety. The Annual Children's Kidney Camp, started in 2000, is always a highlight among our patients, who include dialysis and transplant patients. Throughout the years, our patients have camped at various locations including Outward Bound School at Pulau Ubin, Sarimbun Scouts' camp and Sentosa and have even gone on a cruise. These camps fostered strong friendship among our patients, created lifetime experiences for them and taught them resilience in a fun way.
This support group also organises regular workshops for patients and their families.
For more information on this support group, please call Ms Cheng Peizhi at (65) 6772 2447 or email at
Peizhi_CHENG@nuhs.edu.sg.
Paediatric Chronic Kidney Disease Programme
In this programme, we provide long-term dialysis and perform renal transplantation for paediatric patients with renal failure. Since its inception in 1988, more than 125 children and adolescents have entered this programme. Through individualised therapy, we strive to integrate schooling and eventually employment into our treatment plans.
Our dialysis programme is primarily a home-based automated peritoneal dialysis programme in which our patients receive dialysis at night in their homes. We have 30 to 40 patients actively on automated home peritoneal dialysis. We also provide centre-based chronic haemodialysis as well as home haemodialysis. All new patients and/or caregivers are given in-depth one-to-one training by our nurses, who will perform home visits and provide follow-up support.
Our goal is to provide every child with a chance for a renal transplant, optimum quality of life and long-term outcome. Our transplant programme began in 1989 when the first living-related paediatric renal transplant was performed in Singapore. Since then, more than 70 patients have been transplanted in our centre. Two-thirds of these were from living donors. Our patient and graft survival rates have been consistently comparable to renowned centres in North America. We individualise our immunosuppression regimes based on our patients' risk profiles and using specialised tests that assess immune function. We also have the facilities and expertise to detect patients at high risk of graft rejection and opportunistic infections at an early stage.