Dialysis is a treatment that filters and purifies the blood using a machine. This helps keep your body in balance when the kidneys can’t do their job. Dialysis has been used since the 1940s to treat people with kidney problems.
The kidneys are a pair of organs, each about the size of a fist, located on either side of your spine. They’re responsible for purifying your blood by removing waste and excess fluid from your body. When the kidneys don’t work properly, dialysis is used to perform the function of the kidneys.
Dialysis can take over the job of filtering your blood. A person is hooked up to an artificial filtering machine that removes waste and fluid from the blood. With hemodialysis, a person’s blood travels through tubes to a machine which removes extra fluids and waste. Once the blood is cleaned, the machine sends the blood back to the person through another tube. This process usually takes about 4 hours for kids and has o be done 3 times a week, usually in a dialysis center. Some centers are training adults to perform their own treatments at home.
Dialysis History
In 1861 a Scottish Professor of Chemistry first described the dialysis process and coined the word. But it was almost 85 years later that anyone would invent a practical artificial kidney.
In the early 1940s Dr. Willem Johan Kolff (Netherlands) watched another person die from kidney failure and become interested in blood transfusions and the role the kidneys played in blood processing. With German bombs dropping around him while in The Hauge, he realized that the war was driving more vital work in this area.
Although Kolff suffered from dyslexia (not recognized or understood at the time) and wartime hardships, he pressed forward and improvised the first-generation dialysis machine from car parts, washing machine parts, orange juice cans, and sausage skins. Between 1943 and 1945 he treated the first 16 patients with no real success. By 1945 he was active in the Dutch Resistance and often provided medical alibis to people so they would be considered too ill to be worth arresting. He had continued to make improvements to his dialysis machines and was called upon to examine a female patient in a uremic coma. She was a known Nazi collaborator but true to his ethics decide to treat her as any other patient. After 11 hours of hemodialysis with Kolff’s dialyzer she miraculously awoke from her coma. Her first words were “I’m going to divorce my husband!” Due to this incredible machine, she was indeed able to get her divorce and became the first person to stay alive using this technology. She lived on eight more years before passing from another ailment.By the end of the war Kolff began donating many of his dialysis machines to various hospitals around the world. He also refused to patent his machine and instead sought to freely spread the technology. This generous act enabled doctors and researchers establish their own dialysis facilities and improve the equipment and process. Additionally, Kolff also gave George Thorn (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston) a set of plans for his dialysis machine. This allowed Thorn to make even more improvements and further perfect the design. It is interesting to note that the medical profession was somewhat resistance to dialysis; it was considered ‘unnatural’. Dialysis became ‘mainstream’ by the late 1960s in many countries. Today over 661,000 Americans have kidney failure and of these about 468,000 receive dialysis.What is dialysis treatment like?
Dialysis can be challenging; you are stuffing a week’s worth of kidney function into a 12-15 hour time span. The treatment does not hurt (the constant weekly needle sticks aside) but afterwards it can really take the wind from your sails. This is primarily due to fluid imbalance. Your body stores fluids in three places, your cells, your tissues, and your blood. Dialysis only removed fluid from your blood; leaving a significant imbalance for your body to adjust to. If you have ever had a hangover you know what it feels like after a dialysis treatment. Tired feeling, sleepiness, cramps, nausea, dizziness, and low blood pressure are not uncommon after treatments.
