Dialysis
When people have problems with their kidneys, they use dialysis to filter all the waste materials from the blood and purify them. Dialysis is a treatment that purifies the blood when the kidneys can't. The average number of years a person can live using dialysis is about 5 to 10 years. Some people could also survive about 20 to 30 more years. During the dialysis process, a machine removes all the blood from a person's body, and the purified blood is returned to the body. It can take about 3 to 5 hours for the entire process to complete.
Hemodialysis
The process of hemodialysis is much similar to dialysis. During hemodialysis, a dialysis machine and a special filter are used to remove the blood and exchange it with purified blood.
The difference between dialysis and hemodialysis is that in dialysis; a person's blood is filtered using a machine that works like an artificial kidney. On the other hand, in the procedure of hemodialysis, all the blood of a person is circulated outside their body in a machine placed outside the body.
It takes about 3 to 4 hours for the entire procedure of hemodialysis. The patient may feel tiredness or body pain after the dialysis. The blood is taken out of the body, and then the blood is returned to the body through the tubes.
Side effects of hemodialysis
- Blood pressure gets low for this treatment
- Lack of sleep or problems in sleeping
- Anemia and bone diseases
- The blood pressure may get high.
- The patient may experience muscle cramps after the dialysis
- Itching in different parts of the body.
Peritoneal dialysis
In this procedure, the lining of the abdomen is used to purify the blood inside the body. It is a treatment needed when the kidneys cannot work correctly and remove all the waste materials from the body. Blood and needles are not required in this treatment, so this is painless. Before starting this procedure, surgeons put a soft tube called a catheter inside the patient's abdomen or belly. This process's most critical side effect is that the patient may face bacterial infection. It can be caused if the pipe used is not clean enough. The process is painless, but there are some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of this process are:
- The risk of bacterial infection if the pipe is not clean enough.
- The weight of the patient may increase.
- People with a significant weight may require more therapies to recover.
- The process must be done 7 days a week.
- A permanent catheter is needed for this process to use outside the body.