The authors describe their two-year experience in the treatment of chronic glomerular diseases with cytostatic immunosuppressive agents. Cyclophosphamide, imuran and chloraminophene were used in low doses for an average of 6 months. A total of 25 patients have been treated, including 17 with various anatomic-clinical forms of chronic glomerulonephritis and 7 with secondary glomerular lesions due to systemic diseases: SLE, polyarteritis nodosa, amyloidosis. Remission was observed in 8 patients, improvement in 14, no effect in 3. The best results were observed in the cases of membranous glomerulonephritis, intracapillary proliferative glomerulonephritis and lupus nephritis. In the cases with good response, the nephrotic syndrome, haematuria, renal function, hypertension and immunologic parameters were favourably influenced. The immunosuppressive agents have the value of a causal kind of treatment. They offer new possibilities in the management of more severe and progressive cases of chronic glomerular diseases resistant to classical methods of treatment and to corticosteroids.In the last years interest has developed in the possibility of suppressing pathologically increased immune reactions by means of chemotherapeutic cytostatic agents. This new trend was determined by the progress in the study of the cellular mechanisms of immunity. The leading role of the immunccompetent lymphocytes and the process of their transformation into "immunoblasts" were established [5]. It was found that the immunoblasts display morphologic, staining and cytochemical features which are peculiar to the immature blast ceils. This fact suggested that they might be influenced by cytostatic agents. The remarkable experimental studies carried out in the late fifties and early sixties [11,16, 20,21 ] confirmed that 6-mercaptopurine and some other antimetabolites could suppress the production of antibodies, could alter the delayed (tuberculin-type) hypersensitivity and could prolong the survival of homografts.These promising experimental results were followed by the introduction of certain cytostatic agents as immunosuppressive drugs in organ transplantation and in the treatment of many diseases with confirmed or assumed immune or autoimmune character.The creation of new experimental models of iso-and autoimmune glomerulonephritis [8,9], the study of the similarity between primary glomerulonephritis and renal lesions in typical autoimmune diseases, the demonstration of circulatins anti-kidney antibodies, the use of combined electron microscopic and immunofluorescent examination of renal biopsy material, the dosage of the serum comple- Urology and Nephrology 1, 1969

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The short-term dialysis occupies a medium position between the obligatory dialysis in patients with acute renal failure and the intermittent chronic dialysis in patients with irreversible renal diseases.By short-term dialysis many, eventually fatal, therapeutic errors may be avoided. In many cases, it is possible to gain time necessary for further diagnostic considerations in azotaemia of obscure origin, for overcoming the critical moments of exacerbation in chronic nephropathies and for obtaining a remission of variable duration. Thanks to the short-term dialysis, the condition of the patients in the preoperative period could be controlled, the surgical hazards reduced and the operative results improved. The performance of several dialyses permits a better selection of patients for chronic dialysis and renal transplantation and the avoidance of useless efforts to submit inappropriate patients to such a mode of treatment.At present haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis belong to the most promising methods in the treatment of renal failure [1,2,3,6,7,10,12,14]. Depending on the character and phase of renal diseases and the available facilities, several types of dialysis have been developed, which differ by their technic, number and duration of the separate procedures, etc. [5,8]. The following types of dialysis have gained a relatively wide acceptance [14]:1. Obligatory dialysis, used mainly in cases of acute renal failure, intoxications with dialyzable poisons and in conditions of acute hyperhydration.2. Long-term dialysis [9]. 3. Prophylactic dialysis, for prevention of severe azotaemia and dyselectrolythemia [16].4. Intermittent, chronic dialysis in patients with chronic and irreversible renal lesions in end-stage renal failure.Besides these four "classic" types of dialysis, the indications, advantages and imperfections of which are more or less established, there is also a fifth type, the so-called "short-term" dialysis. This type of dialysis occupies a medium place between the obligatory dialysis in cases of acute renal failure and the relatively indicated chronic dialysis. A certain variant of the short-term dialysis is the socalled "dialysis in unselected patients" [5].The indications of short-term dialysis are not completely elucidated: the technique, duration and tactics of this type of dialysis, the number of procedures Urology and Nephrology 1, 1969