Teachable Medical News article 02152019

This article was written by Mallory Griggs

Does wearing an artificial kidney pack help save you from kidney failure?

 

The news item:

The potential use of the Wearable Artificial Kidney (WAK) for kidney failure patients was reported by UW Medicine web site:

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The article states that: “Worn on the belt, the WAK is a miniature, battery-powered dialysis machine, connected to the patient via a catheter.

New technology has made the WAK possible: lighter, better batteries; more advanced plastics; the invention of a pump that manages water and blood flow differently than in other machines; the use of certain sorbents and enzymes to clean the dialysis fluid. In a word, freedom. ‘The WAK allows patients to receive continuous hemodialysis, while going about their daily activities,’ says Himmelfarb. And, because the machine works continuously, it should act more like a real set of kidneys: constantly cleaning the blood so that patients will start to feel a marked improvement in their health.”

 

So, Why Do I Care??

Kidney failure is a severe disease where about ninety percent of a person’s kidney function is gone and the person’s kidneys do not properly remove waste products from the body. People with kidney failure often feel sick with common symptoms of virus borne illnesses. Kidney failure occurs mainly because of diabetes or high blood pressure but can also occur due to physical injury or other disorders. The damaged kidneys cannot repair themselves, and there is no drug treatment for this disease. The only medical treatment for kidney failure is dialysis or a kidney transplant. There are about twenty million people in the United States who suffer from chronic kidney failure, and it costs about $32 billion annually to treat patients. There are about half a million people in the US who are treated by dialysis, and two hundred thousand people have transplanted kidneys.

 

Plain English, Please!!

First, let’s talk about dialysis. As human beings we have to eliminate waste from our body. Our kidneys remove wastes from our blood and produce urine as the means of eliminating that waste. We all remove household waste one small trash bag at a time. Now imagine that all the doors on your house are locked.  All household waste will stay inside the home.  That is exactly what happens in kidney failure when our kidneys can’t remove waste from our blood.  Dialysis is the way to move wastes out of the blood when the kidneys aren’t working. It works even when all the doors are locked.  In one type of dialysis, a special fluid is pumped into the belly of the patient, and when waste products moved into that dialysis fluid, the fluid is removed from the patient’s belly.  This dialysis is like when all doors are locked on your house, but someone is pulling the trash bags out of your house through the chimney

Next, let’s talk about the wearable kidney. The Wearable Artificial Kidney (WAK) is a portable way to perform the type of dialysis that pumps fluid into the patient’s belly. The WAK is a battery powered machine that is connected to a person’s belly by a catheter and held to the person in a belt-like format. The machine has a pump that regulates the fluid flow and refreshes and cleans the fluid. The WAK is a way to give people back their freedom and go about their daily lives, still getting the treatment they need. The WAK allows more frequent dialysis, which has led to personal health improvements. The WAK would help lower costs of healthcare treatment, and it could be a great way to help prolong the life of a person with kidney failure while they are waiting for a kidney transplant.