Anne Lambie (1928-2023) graduated in medicine from Edinburgh in 1950, having entered training aged just 16 as World War 2 was ending. She studied cellular transport of sodium and potassium with Relman and  Schwartz in Boston, USA, where she also saw early use of the Kolff-Brigham dialyser. She then returned to Edinburgh in 1956, and remained there for the rest of her career.

She joined Sir Derrick Dunlop’s endocrinology and metabolic service, where she had previously been impressed by new principles for the care of chronic renal failure. In 1959 a Kolff-Travenol twin coil dialysis machine arrived, and she became involved in the earliest days of dialysis for acute renal failure, subsequently leading the acute service. The following year she was  involved in the medical management of the first successful (identical twin) kidney transplant in the UK, and then in some of the earliest transplants across immunological barriers. There was a severe outbreak of hepatitis B in the new dialysis unit in Edinburgh in 1969, which for a time threatened the development of the dialysis programme.

• Interview in 2020 for Kidney Research UK
  
• 2005 talk at which Anne describes the first dialysis in Edinburgh in 1959, and ARF thereafter (15 mins) (coming later)
• Much of the early history of Edinburgh Renal Unit came from Anne Lambie, via Dichelle Wong in [date, link].
• Anne wrote an account of her professional life:  The Nephrologist’s Tale,  Proceedings of the RCPE  1990,  20:363-372.
• Anne Lambie obituary –  RCPE
  
• Anne Lambie obituary – The Scotsman

Last Updated on July 12, 2023 by John Feehally