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Hemodialysis: treatment that improves the quality of life

Hemodialysis: treatment that improves the quality of life

Edited by: TOP DOCTORS® at 23/11/2021

Hemodialysis is a therapy that is used for an acute kidney injury or for renal diseases and allows to remove the excess fluid that patients have, also circulates the patient's blood through a filter in which on one side is the blood and the dialysis fluid on the other.

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dialysis Hemodialysis is a therapy that replaces renal function in patients with advanced chronic kidney disease.

It consists in circulating the patient's blood through a filter in which on one side is his blood, and on the other side of the membrane, a dialysis fluid .

This treatment allows to remove the excess of fluid that patients have reflected in both blood pressure (hypertension) and edema (clinically evident fluid retention).

There are other mechanisms by which also diminish the toxins that are favored by other methods like hemodiafiltración.

Procedure and possible risks

Before submitting a patient to this treatment, you will be given a lot of information about the procedure, the risks and benefits thereof, as well as the diet, impact on daily life and costs. Later, vascular access (arteriovenous fistula, permanent catheter or temporary catheter) is established.

Once Hemodialysis is performed, the substances tend to equilibrate from one side to the other of the membrane, so that what is left in the blood (uremic toxins, potassium, phosphorus) passes into the liquid and what is needed in the blood (bicarbonate, calcium) passes from the liquid to the blood, improving the conditions of patients with kidney disease, as well as their survival.

When Hemodialysis is Needed

Hemodialysis may be required for both acute renal injury, which consists of significant deterioration of renal function in a short time, as well as critical patients in the Intensive Care Unit; or, Renal Diseases that have a short evolution time, but which have rapidly deteriorated kidney function.

It may also be required for Advanced Chronic Renal Disease, which has urgent indications such as significant fluid retention with pulmonary congestion.

Or, when a person does not respond well to diuretics, potassium very high that does not attend to conservative management, metabolic acidosis, hypertension difficult to control and non-urgent indications such as renal function less than 10-15%. All this is associated with symptoms such as altered sleep wake cycle, pruritus (itching), loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting and other gastrointestinal symptoms.

How to get on with everyday life

Hemodialysis affects very positively in the daily life of people. It changes the diet towards a much less restrictive one, also it controls symptoms like those already mentioned improving the quality of life of renal patients.

But it also has a difficult face such as the economic impact it generates, the need to invest time to such treatment three or four hours, two or three times a week, in addition to the care associated with vascular access.

Nephrology in Álvaro Obregón