FAQ about Kidney Dialysis
People whose kidneys are damaged cannot filter their blood. Kidney dialysis is one option for artificially filtering the blood. In kidney dialysis, tubes called catheters are surgically inserted into an artery and a vein, usually on a lower arm. The catheters are equipped with valves. Every few days the catheters are connected to a dialysis machine.
Kidney dialysis is provided as a treatment for patients who suffer from kidney failure. It is a process wherein the function of the kidneys is provided artificially. Typically, the patients who make the use of the kidney dialysis process are suffering from acute renal failure, chronic kidney disease and those who for whatever reason have just one kidney.
Kidney dialysis is an artificial treatment process that functions to regulate blood levels and promote waste and fluid removal. The artificial process takes on the natural dialysis functions of the kidney, based on the underlying principles of diffusion, ultrafiltration, and osmosis. There are two types of kidney dialysis- peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis. Dialysis is a treatment to replace the filtering function of the kidneys when they reach end stage renal disease. When kidney function goes below about 15%, kidney dialysis is necessary to clean the blood.
Blood passes from the patient’s artery into the dialysis machine. Inside the machine, the blood travels through many hollow tubes, each of which is surrounded by a thin permeable membrane. Waste materials and ions that have accumulated in the person’s blood diffuse through the membrane into a fluid that has the same makeup as normal blood plasma and is free of wastes. The filtered blood is then returned to the person’s vein. Dialysis is not a permanent solution to kidney failure. A single healthy kidney can meet all of the homeostatic needs of the body, but no dialysis machine can. Dialysis patients must carefully manage their salt, protein, and water intake because the dialysis machine cannot regulate these blood components as well as the kidney can.
Kidneys perform essential bodily functions that mainly include cleaning the blood, eradicating waste products and unwanted water, and aiding red blood cell-production. It filters a daily amount of approximately 1,500 litres of blood. Given the importance of roles that the said organ plays, damage and failure of the kidney prove to be detrimental to people’s health. Without a properly-functioning kidney, wastes products increasingly build up in the blood to heightened levels that will eventually induce coma or death.
Kidney dialysis is something that is believed to be very dreadful for any person. In the past, it was believed that any person that is undergoing kidney dialysis lives a very painful life. It was believed that such patient’s life revolves round the clinics and the life becomes dependent on doctors. But now with the advancement of technology, this is not true anymore. And this is even truer in case of those patients who are otherwise active and healthy. According to one estimate, about 217000 Americans go through dialysis on regular basis. The cost involved in all this is over 11 billion dollars.
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