Vision of the WSAVA Renal Standardization Project

As will become increasingly evident as the reader advances through this supplement, glomerular diseases are a leading cause of renal morbidity and failure in dogs. In animals with glomerular lesions that have not progressed to an end stage, renal biopsy has potential to provide a definitive diagnosis and important clinical information about the type, severity, and biologic behavior of the underlying injury. However, current diagnostic practices and classification schemes based on limited light microscopic information have permitted only a loose grouping of pathologic categories that have had little discriminating potential to direct therapeutic intervention or provide outcome assessment. This limiting (light microscopic) characterization of glomerular disease has provided only a myopic interpretation of the glomerular lesions. With little possibility to characterize subtle distinctions, kidney biopsy became relatively abandoned as a diagnostic tool in veterinary medicine during most of the 20th century. In human patients, differences in discrete glomerular diseases based on more robust pathologic imaging permits expanded clinical and pathologic characterization of glomerular disease prompting specific treatment recommendations and outcome predictions. It seemed reasonable that similar pathologic disparity and potential for more discriminating pathologic characterization was likely for canine glomerular disease if evaluated more precisely. In 2005 with sponsorship of Novartis Animal Health, an international gathering of veterinary nephrologists and nephropathologists convened the International Veterinary Renal Pathology Initiative (IVRPI) at Utrecht, the Netherlands, to develop a vision to more accurately characterize canine glomerular pathology. The goals of the initiative included: