A kidney specialist living in Bermuda demonstrated how the island punches well above its weight in dialysis care while attending a global conference for doctors.

Raphael Loutoby, with Bermuda Home Dialysis Services, represented the island during the annual global meeting of the International Society of Nephrology in Japan.

He gave a speech showcasing Bermuda’s home dialysis programme, a scheme he said had quality better than many countries — even the US.

Dr Loutoby added: “All the parameters we have for our programme show that this is a programme of excellent quality.

“You have people whose kidneys stopped functioning 20 years ago and they are living and having a normal life.”

Dr Loutoby explained the International Society of Nephrology was a body of kidney specialists from around the world looking to advance kidney disease care.

He said he was invited to speak at their annual meeting on March 28 after publishing a scientific article on Bermuda’s dialysis programme.

Dr Loutoby said the island used a treatment known as peritoneal dialysis, or PD, which uses a machine to pump fluid through the abdominal cavity of patients with weak kidneys.

The fluid, according to Dr Loutoby, absorbs chemicals from the blood that would normally be filtered out by the kidneys while also offering.

The doctor said PD was a “very, very effective” form of treatment for kidney failure.

The problem, however, is that treatment can be expensive and dangerous if done improperly, leading to complications such as hernias and serious infections.

Dr Loutoby said 50 per cent of countries in Africa did not offer PD, nor did plenty of other countries in the Caribbean.

However the quality of Bermuda’s service was said to surpass that of many other countries.

He said: “The average level of care we had provided was better than the average for the same thing in the United States.

“By using all the benchmarks and all the parameters, we had less infections than in the United States.”

Dr Loutoby added: “Usually, when a patient is in the end-stage of kidney disease, the life expectancy is very short, but the patients in this programme on dialysis are able to have this modality for an average of seven years.

“This is excellent because in most programmes they don’t keep the patient for long.

“The patient will also be able to be active in the community while doing the therapy at home and living a normal life.

“Some patients are under PD, but they’re taxi drivers, they work for a telephone company or for Belco. Some people could work at the airport and you’d never know.”

According to Dr Loutoby, Bermuda has offered PD treatments for the past 12 years. He said he helped spearhead its use.

He added PD was a crucial programme in Bermuda because of the country’s high levels of diabetes, which can result in kidney failure.

Dr Loutoby called PD’s development a testament to the level of commitment Bermuda brought to treating chronic kidney disease.

He said: “Everything in medicine is expensive — but this is what it costs to save lives in Bermuda.”