Department of Medicine

Faculty

Edward A. Ross, M.D.

Dr. Ross received his medical degree from Boston University in 1979 after completing their six-year medical program. He obtained his residency training in internal medicine at Vanderbilt University and then completed his nephrology fellowship at the University of California in Los Angeles, a program which had a strong clinical research focus. In 1985 he joined the faculty at the University of California in Irvine as an assistant professor and directed the hemodialysis and hemapheresis programs at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach for five years. In 1990 he was recruited by the University of Florida and was appointed associate professor of medicine and director of the end-stage renal disease program. In addition to his research and his responsibilities for house staff and fellow training, Dr. Ross has been very active in the National Kidney Foundation, having served on their National Council for Dialysis.

Publications (through Pubmed)

Research Interest

Since 1990 Dr. Ross has been the director of the end-stage renal disease program at the University of Florida, and has coordinated the rapid expansion of the acute and chronic dialysis services in our hospitals. The recently constructed outpatient dialysis unit affords our fellows a varied inpatient and outpatient experience. In addition to the typical hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis modalities, we also offer home hemodialysis and continuous renal replacement therapies, including continuous veno-venous hemofiltration and dialysis. Because we often serve as a test site for new hemo- and peritoneal dialysis equipment and software, Dr. Ross has been involved in the early development of new technologic advances. His research experience has primarily involved clinical investigations. Currently, our major focus is the development and production of a new extracorporeal device for high clearance immunoadsorption in the treatment of well-defined autoimmune diseases. This novel ligand technology may have broad application in the pharmaceutical industry, which is of particular interest to our collaborators in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry. In order to perfect the development of these devices, we have performed ultrastructural analysis with scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The immunoadsorptive capacity has been quantified in vitro using hybridoma-produced antibodies in an animal model of lupus nephritis. Dr. Ross also has a long-standing research interest in the nutrition of dialysis patients. We have investigated the metabolism of a variety of nutrients, including pyridoxine, vitamin C, oxalate, glutathione, cysteine, and carnitine, and have published methods to improve nutrition in these patient populations. Our renal fellows have also been involved with investigations of hemodialysis equipment including the design of long-term vascular access catheters. Recently, we have begun manufacturing a new dialysis needle design, which is now being tested in an in vitro model. We also periodically perform dialyzer clearance studies (for example, for dialyzer reuse or drug removal), and this affords our trainees an opportunity to learn these techniques. Dr. Ross believes that one of the strengths of the clinical nephrology fellowship program is the design of the dialysis training curriculum. We do not follow the traditional approach of teaching dialysis during discrete blocks of time as part of a rotation through the clinical services (i.e. inpatient consults and transplantation). Instead, fellows follow their own shift of patients continuously throughout their entire training, which provides a much needed longitudinal experience. By having their "own" group of hemo- and peritoneal dialysis patients, our trainees are fully prepared for either the independence of private practice or for the responsibilities of being a mentor in an academic setting at the completion of their fellowship. Included in our clinical curriculum is hands-on training that teaches our fellows how to set up a dialysis machine, perform dialysis treatments, and personally conduct kinetic modeling to quantify the adequacy of dialysis. Our full-time physician assistants provide invaluable assistance to the fellows by minimizing the trainee's paperwork and thereby optimizing the learning experience.