Kidney Dialysis Essay

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Dialysis – Kidney Dialysis Approximately 1,500 liters of blood are filtered by a healthy person's kidneys each day. People whose kidneys either do not work properly or not at all experience a buildup of waste in their blood that without dialysis would increase and eventually reach levels that would cause coma and death. Dialysis is the artificial process of getting rid of waste and unwanted water from the blood. Diffusion is getting rid of waste while ultrafiltration is getting rid of unwanted water. This process is naturally done by our kidneys, but dialysis is the artificial replacement for lost kidney function. Dialysis may be used for people who have become ill and have temporary loss of kidney function or for patients who have permanently lost kidney function. Kidney failure tends to happen gradually. Even if just one kidney works, or both work partially, normal kidney function is still possible. It can be a very long time before any symptoms are noticed by the patient. Symptoms tend to be different in each person, making it harder for doctors to diagnose kidney failure quickly. The most common symptoms are fatigue, a frequent need to urinate, especially at night, with frequency coming more often with time, itchy skin, erectile dysfunction, nausea, shortness of breath, water retention, blood in urine, or protein in urine. Kidney disease may be caused by diabetes (thought to cause about half of all cases), hypertension (thought to cause about one quarter of all cases), inflammation of the kidney, malaria, long-term exposure to lead, solvents and fuels, systemic lupus erythematosus, inherited polycystic kidney disease, physical injury, kidney infection, jaundice, overconsumption of some medications, birth defects, and yellow fever. There are two main types of dialysis - hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. Hemodialysis

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