Dialysis Therapy

Many conditions can affect normal kidney function and as these conditions go untreated, or if they have not been recognized early, or if no medical intervention has taken place by avoiding medical checkups, the patient presents after problematic symptoms have begun and then further deterioration of the kidney may be unavoidable and kidney failure ensues. When this happens the condition is called end stage kidney disease and requires renal replacement therapy including dialysis, either hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis, or kidney transplantation.

Dialysis is the process of removing waste products through an artificial kidney that transfers the toxins from the blood to dialysate which is clean fluid that absorbs the toxins through a semi-permeable membrane in the artificial kidney. The blood runs through thin straw-like membranes and the fluid runs around the membranes and the toxins move from the blood by osmosis and other processes that allow the blood to be cleansed of the excess toxins and excess fluid is removed simultaneously.

A similar process occurs with peritoneal dialysis except in this treatment modality the membrane used to transfer toxins and fluid out the body is the peritoneal membrane itself, the membrane that surrounds all your abdominal organs in a large sac. Clean fluid is pumped into the peritoneal cavity and with millions of small capillaries and blood vessels in this membrane toxins in the blood transfer to the clean fluid and after a time the clean fluid which now is no longer clean is drained from this cavity by gravity and the spent fluid is discarded and clean fluid is again run into the peritoneal cavity to redo the whole process again and is done several times in a day to replace the filtration of the patient’s failing kidney.