Nephrology

Blood Purification Techniques

Dialysis is a treatment where the purification and filtration are done by the machine. This helps to make body balance when the kidneys lost their function. The main purpose of dialysis is that we all know the functions of the kidneys and if they lost their function then the excess salt and other waste product will not be cleared from the blood and will poison the body. However dialysis is not the permanent way to treat the kidney disease. “Hemodialysis” is one of the common types of dialysis in which doctors use artificial kidney to filter the blood and which will be done outside the body. Patient’s blood is drawn out through vascular access, filtered and again put it back to the patient.  There are two types of vascular access for long term dialysis and are arterivenous fistula (AV-fistula) which connects an artery and a vein and an AV graft and for short term treatment catheter is inserted in the large vein present in the neck of the patients.  Another type of dialysis known as “peritoneal dialysis” in which surgically implanted catheter located in the belly region will assists in the purification of blood. The catheter will contain special fluid in the abdomen which will purify the blood and removes waste from the blood.