James M. Chevalier, M.D.

Originally from the Midwest, Dr. Chevalier graduated from SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency and his renal fellowship at NewYork Presbyterin / Weill Cornell Medical Center. He has been here since 2000. He is board certified in both internal medicine and nephrology.

Dr. Chevalier understands that being diagnosed with kidney disease can be, as one person put it, like a tidal wave of questions, fear, and emotions. Dr. Chevalier believes in education and understanding, and has a multi-prong approach when treating his patients.

Dr. Chevalier’s first goal is to treat a patient’s kidney disease and to decrease the stress on the kidneys, in order to keep a patient’s original kidneys working as long as possible, hopefully for the rest of the patient’s life. His second goal, for patients whose kidney disease unfortunately progresses to advanced kidney disease (stage 4 and stage 5), and is approaching kidney failure, is to get the patient a kidney transplant, as an alternative to starting dialysis. And Dr. Chevalier’s third goal is to educate patients with advanced kidney disease on making a back-up plan to do dialysis, in the case that dialysis is needed. He discusses dialysis options with his patients and is strongly in favor of patients doing dialysis in the comfort of their own home, as a temporary measure, until they can get their kidney transplant.

Dr. Chevalier works closely with the other doctors at New York Presbyterian Hospital and The Hospital for Special Surgery. He has expertise in nephrotic syndrome, nephritic syndrome, and glomerulonephritis, including minimal change disease, FSGS, membranous nephropathy, lupus nephritis, Ig A nephropathy, and more. He personally cares for hundreds of these patients, giving him extensive experience. Dr. Chevalier also has a large number of patients with polycystic kidney disease and is a nephrologist certified to prescribe tolvaptan for his polycystic kidney patients.