Nephrology today. Symposium. 7 September 1984.

Due to the foresight of Professor Graham Bull and Mr John Megaw, the Renal Unit was established in the Belfast City Hospital in 1959 to provide treatment for patients with acute reversible kidney failure. Plans were made to alter part of Ward 9 to provide a dialysis room, a preparation area cum office and two cubicles for patients, but the artificial kidney, a Kolff twin coil kidney, arrived long before the premises were ready. After a trial run in the Department of Surgery on a dog made anuric by ligation of the ureters, I planned to see the equipment in use at the Royal Air Force Renal Unit in Halton. However, before this could be arranged, in June 1959 an 80-year-old man with severe uraemia due to prostatism was admitted, and the late Mr Megaw persuaded me to treat him. The artificial kidney was taken to an operating theatre in Ava 2, and despite my complete lack of experience with the equipment a very satisfactory improvement in the patient's biochemistry was achieved. From then on we were in business, and for the next nine months the artificial kidney treatment became a travelling service, being set up near the patient where there was any sort of plumbing. The patients suffered from post-obstetric renal failure, trauma, incompatible blood transfusion etc, and some still survive.