Wearable artificial kidney may change how we perform dialysis forever. [View all]

[GentryDixon]

Wearable artificial kidneys may soon replace traditional dialysis machines, the results of a new clinical study show. While there are still some teething issues to fix before wide scale use, patients praised the system’s portability and ease of use.

Dialysis is required by patients whose kidneys can no longer effectively clean waste products out of the bloodstream. Current treatments are done in three treatment sessions a week. These are performed in hospitals as the process involves big, stationary machines which filter the patient’s blood. As you can probably imagine this is quite a hassle and overall unpleasant experience for the patients, and having access to a wearable device that would allow treatment to be performed at home or while mobile would be a huge quality of life improvement for them.

The FDA authorized trials of a prototype device that does all this, dubbed the “Wearable Artificial Kidney”. The trials involved seven patients from the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle during late 2015. The experiments aimed to determine how efficient the new device is at the task, but also whether or not it could be safely used for prolonged periods of time. More ......



http://www.zmescience.com/medicine/artificial-kidney-56657/

I am a kidney transplant patient. I was on peritoneal dialysis for about 5 months before my transplant. I was on home dialysis every day, about 10 hours per night, versus the hemodialysis which this appears to be. What a wonderful breakthrough this would be for kidney patients.