Birth of IRRIV
IRRIV is an international acronym standing for International Renal Research Institute of Vicenza. In 2008,  from an idea of Prof. Claudio Ronco, a big project supported from the “Associazione Amici del Rene di Vicenza” Onlus (AARVI onlus) began, materialized in the creation of a scientific Institute joined to the Department of Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation of the San Bortolo Hospital. IRRIV is basically  the scientific arm of AARVI onlus and it constitutes an ideas incubator  as well as a project and research container. If at the beginning IRRIV was constituted only by a virtual entity, nowadays it is a reality with real spaces, study-rooms and a multimedia library. Consequent to an initiative implemented in 1999 in order to modernize the whole Department with the Nefro 2000 Project, in 2011 IRRIV Project was materialized with the creation of laboratories, the new area for outpatient clinic activities (including those ones  for transplantation), the new peritoneal and dialysis vascular accesses operating theatre and the continuation  of the museum realization. The entire 2nd floor, where IRRIV is located, was recovered and the new project realization  have been financed by AARVI onlus, thanks to contributions and inheritances from meritorious partners  who made the initiative’s economic sustainability possible. Thanks to the contribution of many people (such as Surveyor De Cal, Architect Crimì, Engineer Nardella), the Prof Ronco’s perseverance, the General Direction fore-sight and President Zuffellato’s resolution, together with vice-presidents Roberta Boschetti and Roberto Toffolon, IRRIV is now an important center  for helpful educational and research activities of the San Bortolo Hospital. The new institute logo represents the true “mission” of IRRIV: the ideal transition from the native kidney into the artificial one.

Construction of IRRIV

New windows with aluminum fixtures, doors with green laminates shaded like the main color of the 2nd floor, kilometers of cables and electric circuits, new hydraulic and air-conditioning machinery, floors with adequate finishing in the operating area, and technical furniture, hoods, counters, a complete computer  equipment in all the floor, tables, chairs and bookcases, laboratory and research machineries: this is all what AARVI gave to the hospital to realize IRRIV, new clinics and the new surgical Nephrology area. All these things, together with the extraordinary work from volunteers, the technical office support and friends’ help, allowed the realization of an activity which will characterize Vicenza and its Hospital.  Researchers will have a place where to work, patients will have comfortable lounges and clinics, operations will be performed in equipped and adequate areas, Medical Culture will be developed even through the multimedia library and the center of Medical Culture “Giuseppe Roi”.

Achievement and opening of IRRIV
The Nephrology Department had been suffering for many years from commixture problems among  hospitalized patients and outpatients, related to clinics’ arrangements in the same areas committed to hospitalization. At the same time, transplanted patients clinics were positioned in a corridor inside the General Surgery Department, with resulting evident discomfort. An additional problem was represented by the shortage of areas for Department laboratories, the lack of spaces entirely dedicated to ultrapure dialysis-water production, as well as by the inadequacy of the operating vascular and peritoneal accesses room.
It was because of this that, after a careful project analysis, AARVI’s President and Vice Presidents discussed with the manager of the hospital about the possibility of renewing the second floor of the block, with the creation of a wide institutional area equipped with clinics and operating theatre, as well as an area dedicated to laboratories, didactics and research. (Altre foto dei locali in restauro)
More than one year after the works had begun, on June 4th 2012 both the new pavilion of  Department of Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation and the Renal Research Institute of Vicenza (IRRIV) were inaugurated, ready to assist either the patients, the district, as well as Vicenza.