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What is Dialysis? |
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View of Mt. Adams from the Dialysis Center |
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How do healthy kidneys work?
Healthy people usually have two kidneys, although just a fraction of one kidney is needed to maintain good health. Each is made up of several sections surrounded by a tough, outer capsule, containing 1,000,000 nephrons, the working parts of the kidney. Here, excess water and wastes are filtered out of the blood so they don't build up to a toxic level.
Your coffee maker works in a similar way to the kidneys. Water is pumped into a reservoir where it mixes with the grounds. A filter keeps the large grounds out, but lets the coffee-flavored liquid pass through. If the filter is damaged, grounds will leak through and foul the coffee. The kidneys provide the filter bodily fluids pass through, holding back the toxins to be discarded through the ureters and bladder, and allowing the good fluids to pass back into the body's blood stream.
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Why do kidneys fail?
Acute kidney failure may be experienced as a response to an illness, injury, or toxin that stresses the kidneys. Chronic kidney failure is a long, usually slow process that involves a progressive loss of nephrons. Most of those patients who are using hemodialysis treatment suffer from one of these broad disease classifications:
- Diabetes
- Hypertension
- Glomerulonephritis
- Cystic disorders or polycystic kidneys
- Drug toxicity, use of recreational drugs and abuse of over-the-counter drugs
- Interstitial nephritis (damage to the supporting structure of the kidney)
- Obstruction of the urinary tract system
- Other causes, including collagen diseases, congenital defects, AIDS, and sickle call disease
How does hemodialysis work?
Some patients choose to use in-home continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis to treat their kidney failure. In this process, one to two liters of sterile dialysate, a fluid containing chemicals in amounts similar to normal blood, is put into the peritoneum (the body's belly cavity) through surgically implanted catheters. This fluid remains there for several hours, while excess fluids and wastes pass from the patient's blood into the dialysate across capillaries in the peritoneum. Used dialysate is then drained out through the catheter and replaced with fresh dialysate.
Another method used is hemodialysis, which uses an artificial kidney, or dialyzer, as the semipermeable membrane. During hemodialysis, the patient's blood is pumped through tubing and the dialyzer, at the same time as the sterile dialysate, and then back into the patient again. These fluids do not mix together in the dialyzer, as they are held apart by the semipermeable membrane. Excess fluids and wastes pass through this semipermeable membrane, out of the patient's blood and into the dialysate. This is an amazingly simple process requiring expensive equipment which is critical to the survival of these patients.
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