Nephrology is one of the fields of internal medicine that became independent in the 1950s and 1960s (1). It is worth recalling that the great precursors of Polish nephrological thought, such as Jakub Penson or Jan Roguski, still considered themselves to be internists rather than nephrologists (2, 3, 4). The only person from this generation who did not have such doubts was Zdzisław Wiktor, who was the first in Poland and one of the first in Europe to establish a nephrology clinic in 1958 in Wrocław (1). He simultaneously entitled his work „Zarys Nefrologii Klinicznej” („An Outline of Clinical Nephrology”) (5). In other academic centres nephrology clinics appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. They were founded by such excellent clinicians as F. Kokot in Katowice, Z. Hanicki in Kraków, K. Bączyk in Poznań, A. Wojtczak in Lublin, A. Manitius in Gdańsk, M. Myśliwiec in Białystok, and others (1, 6, 7, 8). A prominent role in the development of nephrological thought was played by the Nephrology Board of the Clinical Pathophysiology Committee of the 6^th Department of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which was headed for many years by Prof. Tadeusz Orłowski (9). Not until 1983 was the Polish Society of Nephrology (Polskie Towarzystwo Nefrologiczne – PTN) initiated, beginning the slow but systematic march of Polish nephrology to the international salons. The first president of PTN was T. Orłowski, and his successors were, in order: K. Bączyk, F. Kokot, B. Rutkowski and currently A. Więcek (1, 7, 10). Together with the development of clinical nephrology in the last 20 years also dynamic progress in renal replacement therapy has occurred (11, 12, 13). Since the beginning of this century, no patients with terminal renal failure are left without access to this form of therapy (13, 14). The treatment techniques initiated and used in nephrology have applications in other fields of medicine, such as anaesthesiology and intensive therapy, clinical toxicology, hepatology, transplantology and cardiology (15-21). Therefore it is nothing unusual that Franciszek Kokot stated in one of his articles that: "nephrology is the flywheel of contemporary medicine” (22). Bearing this in mind, it would be worth assessing the current scientific position of Polish nephrology, which is precisely the aim of the present study.

Data presented in this publication derive from statistical surveys carried out in academic nephrology centres on the order of the Executive Board of the Polish Academy of Sciences for the period 2005-2009. A questionnaire specially developed for this purpose was sent out to 24 centres (17 clinics of adult nephrology and 7 clinics of paediatric nephrology), and completed forms were received from 19 clinics. Data listed in tables are in the form of overall or mean results and are anonymous, with no possibility to identify the individual centres that took part in the research. Additionally, for comparison four leading centres from Western Europe ( Copenhagen, Denmark; Paris, France; Aachen, Germany; Pavia, Italy) and Central and Eastern Europe ( Zagreb, Croatia; Prague, Czech Republic; Bucharest, Romania; Budapest, Hungary) were chosen at random. From the bibliometric database Medline publications from the same time period were chosen.