Professor Takashi Akiba, Honorary President of the Japanese Society for Artificial Organs (JSAO), passed away on July 2, 2022. On that day, the 67th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Dialysis Therapy (JSDT) was held in Yokohama. Prof. Akiba was an honorary member of JSDT and was scheduled to chair the education session. He did not arrive at the meeting and we were subsequently informed of his sudden death.

Prof. Akiba was highly respected for his outstanding career working on blood purification medicine and was very well known internationally. After graduating from Tokyo Medical and Dental University, he studied nephrology, and particularly management of kidney failure. After studying at the University of California, San Francisco, he returned to Japan and became a professor at Tokyo Women’s Medical University and expanded his activities. He served on the board of directors of many academic societies, including the International Society of Blood Purification, JSAO, JSDT, Japanese Association of Dialysis Physicians (JADP), Japanese Society for Apheresis, Japanese Society for Therapeutics and Engineering, Japanese Society for Blood Purification in Critical Care, and Japanese Society for Peritoneal Dialysis, and organized academic meetings. Prof. Akiba also led the Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study (DOPPS), an international collaborative study of hemodialysis patients, as a Japanese member of the Steering Committee.

Of Prof. Akiba’s many academic achievements, his planning of infection control measures for dialysis care is particularly remarkable. He took the lead in developing the JSDT “Guidelines for the Treatment of Hepatitis C Virus Infection in Dialysis Patients” and the JADP “Guidelines for the Treatment of HIV Infected Dialysis Patients” and “Guidelines for Standard Hemodialysis Procedures and Prevention of Infection in Maintenance Hemodialysis Facilities (1st to 4th Edition)”, and contributed much to establishment of safe dialysis treatment. We will always remember his social activism in moving patients who had difficulty receiving dialysis treatment from Iwaki to Tokyo after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and finding a way to have them stay in Tokyo until the situation calmed down. Many dialysis patients were saved through his efforts.

Prof. Akiba entered Tokyo Medical and Dental University in 1969, when the entrance examination for the University of Tokyo was cancelled due to the campus unrest throughout Japan. He originally wanted to enter the Faculty of Engineering or the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo, but since the entrance examinations were cancelled, he decided to pursue a career in medicine. All the students who entered Tokyo Medical and Dental University that year were excellent, but Prof. Akiba was the most outstanding of all. The alumni of the Nephrology Research Group of Tokyo Medical and Dental University were very happy that the campus unrest brought outstanding people into medicine who would otherwise not have studied medicine.

As a colleague of Prof. Takashi Akiba for 47 years, I sincerely pray for him to rest in peace.

1950.8.19

Born in Takasaki City

1975

Graduated from Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 2nd Department of Internal Medicine

1985

Studied at the University of California, San Francisco

1988

Assistant Professor, 2nd Department of Internal Medicine (nephrology), Tokyo Medical and Dental University

2000

Associate Professor, Hemo-purification Center, Tokyo Medical and Dental University

2001

Professor, Department of Blood Purification, Kidney Center, Tokyo Women's Medical University

2016

Director of Sekikawa Hospital

2018

Honorary Director of Tokyo Next Medical and Dialysis Clinic

2022.7.2

Passed away