Systemic vasculitis involving the kidney: the nephropathologist’s point of view

Abstract

Summary Kidneys are often targets of systemic vasculitis (SVs), being affected in many different forms and representing a possible sentinel of an underlying multi-organ condition. Renal biopsy still remains the gold standard for the identification, characterization and classification of these diseases, solving complex differential diagnosis thanks to the combined application of light microscopy (LM), immunofluorescence (IF) and electron microscopy (EM). Due to the progressively increasing complexity of renal vasculitis classification systems (e.g. pauci-immune vs immune complex related forms), a clinico-pathological approach is mandatory and adequate technical and interpretative expertise in nephropathology is required to ensure the best standard of care for our patients. In this complex background, the present review aims at summarising the current knowledge and challenges in the world of renal vasculitis, unveiling the potential role of the introduction of digital pathology in this setting, from the creation of hub-spoke networks to the future application of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to aid in the diagnostic and scoring/classification process.