Nephrology, Hypertension & Renal Transplantation
Faculty
JogiRaju Venkata Tantravahi, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Tantravahi graduated with a B. A. in History in 1984 from Columbia University. He was named the 1984 Jacoby Presidential Scholar of Columbia University. Following his undergraduate studies, he entered the M.D.-Ph.D. program at Cornell University Medical College. His graduate studies focused on the mechanisms of transcription elongation and termination by eukaryotic RNA polymerase II. After graduating from the M.D.-Ph.D. program, he completed a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at Women and Infants’ Hospital in Providence R. I., where he studied the effects of retinoic acid on placental differentiation. He began his clinical training thereafter, completing his Internal Medicine residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Yale University School Medicine in 1998 and his Nephrology fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in 2001. During his fellowship training, Dr. Tantravahi developed an interest in the issues unique to patients with end stage renal disease, including problems associated with calcium and phosphorus metabolism, cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and hemodialysis vascular access.
Research Interest
Regardless of the cause of end stage renal disease, the vasculature suffers. The extensive pathology inflicted upon blood vessels leads to a number of disease states. When small vessels calcify in the skin and subcutaneous tissues, calciphylaxis develops. In dialysis patients, coronary arteries calcify, and, in conjunction with pre-existing conditions such as diabetes hypertension and hyperlipidemia, these patients experience accelerated and devastating cardiac complications. Finally, vascular pathology makes the maintenance of effective hemodialysis vascular access difficult. I am interested in studying and developing novel ways to treat the vascular complications of end stage renal disease, and I plan to focus my efforts on the problem of vascular access in end stage renal disease patients.