Abstract
Improving kidney descriptions in medical publishing led to the 2019 Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) Consensus Conference. Goals included the standardization and refinement of the kidney-related nomenclature used in English-language scientific articles, and a guiding principle was to establish a patient-centered nomenclature.
Therefore, a recommendation was made to use the term "kidney" rather than "renal" for general descriptions of kidney function and disease, assuming that it is easier for patients to comprehend terms incorporating the more familiar noun "kidney" rather than the Latin adjective "renal." Although we essentially agree with their conclusions (especially welcoming the proposals to harmonize abbreviations), these goals are not simply applicable to many other languages.