Abstract

Filippo Romeo was a prominent teacher of Medical Clinic of the University of Messina.

He devoted a lot of his time to study the renal function not only in acute and chronic kidney patients but also in patients affected by other pathologies as well in internal medicine, cardiology, in metabolic alterations and in pregnancy. He discovered an interesting renal function test named “prova di Romeo” that was considered original and unique kidneys function test in the Paolo Introzzi Treatise of Internal Medicine. His test needed only of 100 minutes urine collection and permitted contemporary and separately to study kidney glomerular and tubular function. Even if Romeo’s test was considered contradictory because neither of the clearances (glomerular and tubular) were effective for evaluate exactly glomerular filtration it pushed nephrologists to evaluate two clearances to have more complete kidneys function evaluation.

Romeo showed the strictly relationship between kidney and heart and he could to be considered a pionier of cardio-nephrology.

Keywords: glomerular function, tubular function, Romeo’s test