What's on the web for nephrology?*

The use of the World Wide Web has increased dramatically during the last two decades. This trend within the general population did not spare patients and relatives: a recent report described an increase in the use of the Internet by patients to retrieve health-related information from 16% in 2000 to 55% in 2006 among patients who attended an ear/nose/throat clinic [1]. Similar data in renal patients are lacking but it is tempting to speculate that Internet use may be even more frequent, not least due to the complexity of diseases and treatments in our field. The use of the Internet by health-care providers has increased dramatically as well and numerous websites compete for our attention. Here, we try to review what the Internet has on offer, both for renal patients and relatives and for their health-care providers. We focus on resources in English although we appreciate that good websites also exist in many other languages.