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Kidney Treatments🏥
Kidney failure is a major problem and can be treated/cured by either dialysis or a transplant.
The three steps of dialysis are: You will have to know about this in I/GCSE Biology 🤨
- Take “dirty” blood from patient
- Put blood through dialysis machine where it flows through dialysate (separated by a partially permeable membrane. The waste moves from areas of high to low concentration so urea, ions and excess water is lost. Glucose and salts stay in the blood because the dialysate contains the same concentration as the blood
- Give the clean blood back
- Dialysis is good because it does treat kidney failure patients and stops them from dying, however, it does not indefinitely cure the disease. Only a transplant can cure it forever and even that does not always work. The patient who has had a transplant must take frequent immunosuppressant drugs so their body does not reject the foreign organ. It is also hard to find an exact tissue match.
References: https://www.miskawaanhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/chronic-kidney-disease-stages.jpg
Drafted by Catrina (Biology)