Following the World Congress of Nephrology 2009 I have the honor to step in the position of chairman of one of the world most renowned dialysis registries which has a tradition of more than 40 years. As Prof. Carmine Zoccali is moving out he is leaving a bar of success high across the sky of European registries. With Kitty Jager, as the solid centre position and chief officer of the Amsterdam based Registry, I personally feel confident to fulfill the requirements the Society expects from the chairman of its Registry. The support of the Society is substantial for the new tasks being threefold: First, the successful work of the previous chairman and the Amsterdam group seeks continuation. Long-lived programs and a new grant
(the second in row) from the European Community FP7 framework promises high calibre research in upcoming years. Second, we slowly move towards building up a “Low Clearance Clinic Registry” using focused data collection. Third, the Registry will aim to focus on rare diseases dissecting from the database and collecting from the new predialysis Registry. We will not only use our existing data base, but also will embark into prospective data collection of rare events (e.g. pregnancy on dialysis). We also aim to liaise with existing small national registries in the field or rare disorders (e.g. calciphylaxy) and rare diseases (e.g. ciliopathies) with the option to support biobanking. The final aim is to provide a solid database for the best specialists and scientists to exploit the phenotypes with adequate methodology, phenotypes which are meticulous collected by clinicians. The time has come were all contributing clinicians can also participate ad personam et nomen in so-called multi-authorship, registry derived, clinical science research projects.

     Christoph Wanner