Kidney Disease Dialysis

Kidney Disease Dialysis
Your kidneys are primarily responsible for filtering the waste products in your blood for excretion. Basically, kidneys are the two bean-structured organs found on either side of the abdominal cavity, towards the back. In acute kidney complications, doctors may determine that a patient's kidneys are no longer functional. Nevertheless, the need to purify the blood still exists. This is where dialysis comes in.

As such, dialysis is a medical procedure that used to substitute for normal kidneys functions if the kidneys are dysfunctional. In most cases, a dialysis allows the kidney patient to normal, productive and healthy lives henceforth, despite having dysfunctional kidneys. In the US today, over 200,000 individuals are on dialysis in an ongoing basis.

By kidney disease dialysis, we refer to any kidney complications that result to the adoption of dialysis techniques. Essentially therefore, dialysis aides the body in performing those functions usually left to the kidneys in the event that an individual's kidneys fail.

A normal kidney has a host of roles in the body. Such roles include:

1. Regulating the body fluid balance

This is done by adjusting excreted urine and sweat volume such that when the body has less water, les urine and sweat are excreted through the kidneys and vice versa.

2. Removing waste products from the blood, that usually result from normal body processes like metabolism

3. Regulating chemical constituents of the blood to prevent build up of toxins or high levels of the chemicals that could be injurious to body cells

When dialysis techniques are adopted, the dialysis helps execute these functions. Before a patient is diagnosed to be in need of dialysis, the blood-borne wastes have accumulated in to very high levels. This shows that the kidneys are no longer functional. Although the toxin levels build up pretty gradually (Hence the usual delay in diagnosing kidney failure), when they do accumulate for a long time, they can be lethal.

Doctors can measure two main blood chemical levels while diagnosing the need for kidney diseases dialysis. These two blood chemical levels are creatinine level and blood urea nitrogen level. Their continued rise indicates a decreasing ability of an individual's kidneys to cleanse his or her blood.

Currently, we have two main types of kidney disease dialysis namely, hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. For hemodialysis, doctors use a special filter to effectively remove all excess waste products and any excess water from the blood. In peritoneal dialysis, doctors use a fluid (placed into the individual's stomach cavity via a plastic tube) so as to remove any excess fluids and waste products from the body.