About

Susan L. Furth, M.D., Ph.D., is a Professor of Pediatrics specializing in Nephrology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. She holds the Edmond F. Notebaert Endowed Chair in Pediatric Research at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where she also serves as the Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President. Her work focuses on pediatric kidney health, including research on pediatric kidney length and volume percentiles, the relationship of serum uric acid with neurocognitive functions in children with chronic kidney disease, and the use of multi-institutional pediatric learning health systems to study lupus nephritis. Dr. Furth's contributions include advancing understanding of pediatric nephrology through clinical investigation and research, with a particular emphasis on chronic kidney disease and related conditions in children.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Intensive care medicine
• Nursing
• Pathology
• Biology
• Urology
• Pediatrics
• Endocrinology
• Physical therapy

Selected publications

• Ambulatory arterial stiffness index among children and adolescents with chronic kidney disease a report from the Chronic Kidney Disease in Children Study

  Research Square · 2026-04-23

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Relationship of Serum Uric Acid With Neurocognitive Functions in Children and Adolescents With Mild to Moderate Chronic Kidney Disease

  Pediatric Neurology · 2026-01-08

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The epidemiology of kidney and urinary tract infections in pediatric chronic kidney disease: prevalence, risk factors and association with GFR decline in the Chronic Kidney Disease in Children Study

  Pediatric Nephrology · 2026-03-25

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Urinary tract and kidney infections are potential complications in pediatric chronic kidney disease (CKD), especially among patients with congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT). We characterized the prevalence of self-reported infections from childhood through young adulthood; evaluated risk factors; and quantified the association with CKD progression. METHODS: Infections in the past year were self-reported at annual Chronic Kidney Disease in Children (CKiD) study visits. Age-specific infection prevalences were stratified by sex and CKD diagnoses (glomerular, non-glomerular non-CAKUT, CAKUT low-risk for infections, and three CAKUT high-risk categories: reflux nephropathy, obstructive uropathy, and other high-risk). Repeated measures logistic regression quantified associations between infections and clinical variables. Estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) change in the year after infection was assessed using linear regression, adjusted for age, sex, diagnoses, previous year eGFR, medications, and bladder catheterization. RESULTS: 943 participants contributed 4707 person-visits. Among 175 with obstructive uropathy, approximately one-third of boys and two-thirds of girls reported a previous year infection; infection prevalence for other CAKUT diagnoses ranged from about 20% to 50%. Bladder catheterization and history of infections were significantly associated with recent infections. Adjusted eGFR decline in the year after reporting infection was -1.7% faster compared to those free of infection (95%CI: -3.2%, -0.1%, p < 0.05), but this was attenuated when adjusted for catheterization (p = 0.082). CONCLUSIONS: CAKUT diagnoses were associated with higher infection risk, especially among those with obstructive uropathy, and girls reported more infections than boys. Self-reported infection was significantly associated with accelerated eGFR decline in the following year.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Predictors of Longitudinal Changes in Neurocognitive Functioning in Pediatric Chronic Kidney Disease: Findings From the CKiD Study

  Pediatrics Open Science · 2026-04-01

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVE The primary objective of this study is to examine changes in targeted neurocognitive functions over time and to determine what factors influence these changes. METHODS Participants included 827 cases with mild to moderate chronic kidney disease (CKD). Median chronological age was 11.5 years at study entry, 61% were male, and 39% of mothers had a high school education or less. Cognitive assessment included measures of intelligence, attention regulation, and executive functioning administered at study entry and every 2 years over a span of 8 years. Covariates at study entry included sociodemographic, CKD-related, and selected time-varying factors (eg, estimated glomerular filtration rate [eGFR] annual percent change). Longitudinal linear mixed models were used to examine a priori neurocognitive outcomes. RESULTS After adjustment for covariates, IQ and executive-function ratings increased slightly over time; however, an initial association was shown for greater change in eGFR contributing to significantly lower verbal IQ and full scale IQ over time (ie, ∼1/2 point per 5% decline in eGFR). After correction for multiple comparisons, abnormal birth history and the presence of seizures were associated with declines in IQ (∼1 to 7 points). CONCLUSIONS Findings from this study suggest relative stability in cognition over an 8-year period in children with mild to moderate CKD, although targeted CKD-related variables were significantly associated with lower IQ scores over time. In particular, abnormal birth history and seizures were associated with declines in cognitive functions over time, and clinical evaluation may be warranted when such conditions are present.

  PublisherDOI

• Association between estimated time with low glomerular filtration rate and access to transplant among youth with advanced chronic kidney disease

  Pediatric Nephrology · 2026-04-06

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Slower chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression allows more time for transplant preparation. Whether differences in CKD progression by race/ethnicity associate with preemptive or living donor transplantation in youth has not been well studied. METHODS: ) and odds of preemptive or living donor transplantation among youth with CKD. eGFR was estimated using the bedside Schwartz (if < 18 years) and CKD-EPI 2021 equations (if ≥ 18 years) and the CKiD U25 equation in sensitivity analysis. Time spent with low eGFR was compared by race/ethnicity. RESULTS: Among 333 youth with CKD (median age 11 years [IQR 7,14]), median time spent with low eGFR was 28.8 months. 77% were preemptively waitlisted, and 45% received preemptive transplantation (56% of White and 24% of Black youth). Black (vs. White) youth had shorter time with low eGFR (-6.5 months; 95% CI -11.5, -1.4). Time with low eGFR did not differ across other groups. Findings were similar using the U25 equation. Every additional year spent with low eGFR was associated with higher odds of preemptive (OR 1.45; 95% CI 1.24-1.70) and living donor transplantation (OR 1.42; 95% CI 1.21-1.67), but not preemptive waitlisting (OR 0.96; 95% CI 0.83-1.11) in unadjusted analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Longer time spent with low eGFR is associated with greater odds of preemptive and living donor transplantation. Earlier transplant referral for all children, especially Black youth, may help improve access to preemptive and living donor transplantation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Contemporary Treatment Responses of Recurrent Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis or Steroid Resistant Nephrotic Syndrome in Children after Kidney Transplantation: Phase 2 of a Multicenter Electronic Health Record Data Analysis

  Research Square · 2026-04-20

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Food Assistance to Financially Insecure Children and Adolescents With Chronic Kidney Disease: Impact on Disease Progression

  Journal of Renal Nutrition · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Longitudinal changes of health-related quality of life in childhood chronic kidney disease

  UNC Libraries · 2025-07-26

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Quantifying “Medical Renal Disease”: A Pediatric Pilot Study Using Ultrasound Radiomics for Differentiating Acute Kidney Injury and Chronic Kidney Disease

  Diagnostics · 2025-08-21 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Background: Differentiating acute kidney injury (AKI) from chronic kidney disease (CKD) in children remains a critical unmet need due to the limitations of current clinical and biochemical markers. Conventional ultrasound lacks the sensitivity to discern subtle parenchymal alterations. This study explores the application of ultrasound radiomics—a novel, non-invasive, and quantitative image analysis method—for distinguishing AKI from CKD in pediatric patients. Methods: In this retrospective cross-sectional pilot study, kidney ultrasound images were obtained from 31 pediatric subjects: 8 with oliguric AKI, 14 with CKD, and 9 healthy controls. Renal parenchyma was manually segmented, and 124 advanced texture features were extracted using the open-source ©PyFeats. Features encompassed multiple categories (e.g., GLCM, GLSZM, WP). Statistical comparisons evaluated intergroup differences. Principal Component Analysis identified the top 10 most informative features, which were used to train supervised machine learning models. Model performance used five-fold cross-validation. Results: Radiomic analysis revealed significant intergroup differences (p &lt; 0.05). CKD cases exhibited increased echogenicity and heterogeneity, particularly in GLCM and GLSZM features, consistent with chronic fibrosis. AKI cases displayed more homogeneous texture, likely reflecting edema or acute inflammation. While echogenicity separated diseased from healthy kidneys, it lacked specificity between AKI and CKD. Among ML models, XGBoost achieved the highest macro-averaged F1 score (0.90), followed closely by SVM and Random Forest, demonstrating strong classification performance. Conclusions: Radiomics-based texture analysis of grayscale ultrasound images effectively differentiated AKI from CKD in this pilot study, offering a promising, non-invasive imaging biomarker for pediatric kidney disease. These preliminary findings justify prospective validation in larger, multicenter cohorts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Patient-Reported Ratings of Pediatric to Adult Nephrology Transition in Young Adults with CKD

  Journal of the American Society of Nephrology · 2025-10-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01DK092977

  NIH · $3.7M · 2017

• NIH Grant K24DK078737

  NIH · $1.6M · 2017

• Chronic Kidney Disease in Children (CKiD)

  NIH · $23.8M · 2003–2028

• Comparative effectiveness of balanced fluids versus normal saline to reduce acute and chronic kidney disease in children with sepsis

  NIH · $15.5M · 2017–2027

• NIH Grant R21DK064313

  NIH · $327k · 2007

Frequent coauthors

• Bradley A. Warady

  Children's Mercy Hospital

  635 shared

• Joseph T. Flynn

  University of Washington

  285 shared

• Mark Mitsnefes

  University of Cincinnati

  272 shared

• Arlene C. Gerson

  165 shared

• Barbara A. Fivush

  University of Baltimore

  157 shared

• Craig S. Wong

  143 shared

• Larry A. Greenbaum

  Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

  140 shared

• Matthew B. Matheson

  Johns Hopkins University

  136 shared