Chronic Kidney Disease

If your kidneys are damaged in some way, or are affected by disease, they may be unable to maintain their vital functions that keep you well.

As the kidneys progressively fail to filter the blood efficiently, they do not do their job of removing excess water, waste products, and toxins. The levels of these substances in your body increase, making you feel unwell. The condition is called uremia. In the first instance, patients who have early stage Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) with mild uremia may be treated with drugs and diet management.

For many patients this is enough to keep them feeling well indefinitely. For others, despite management with diet and drugs, more kidney function is lost over time. If uremia becomes severe, it reaches end stage renal failure (ESRD), and you must begin dialysis to replace the job of your kidneys.

Hemodialysis

Hemodialysis is an extremely effective treatment that uses an artificial kidney to cleanse waste products and excess water and salt from the blood of patients with kidney failure. Tubes are connected to a dialysis machine that withdraws and returns blood from either a surgically created vein in the arm or a catheter placed in a vein in the neck or chest.