Frequent dialysis poses risks for kidney disease patients

A soon to be published article in Journal of American Society of Nephrology, reported initial by Science Codex, it is stated that frequent dialysis poses problems for patients, requiring patients to undergo more repair procedures to the site through which blood is removed and returned.

Rita Suri, MD (Western University and Lawson Health Research Institute, in London, Canada) and her colleagues conducted two separate 12-month clinical trials in which they randomly assigned 245 patients to receive either in-center daily hemodialysis (6 days/week) or conventional hemodialysis (3 days/week) and 87 patients to receive either home nocturnal hemodialysis (6 nights/week) or conventional hemodialysis. Three access events were recorded: repair, loss, and access-related hospitalizations.

Among the major findings:

In the Daily Trial, 77 (31%) of 245 patients experienced one of these events, with the daily group having 33 repairs and 15 losses and the conventional group having 17 repairs, 11 losses, and 1 hospitalization.

Overall, the risk for an access event was 76% higher with daily hemodialysis compared with conventional hemodialysis.

Similar trends were seen in the Nocturnal Trial, although the results were not statistically significant.

"Our study is the first randomized trial to show that dialyzing more frequently may have potential harmful effects on the hemodialysis vascular access. This has important implications for patients and physicians considering or performing frequent hemodialysis," said Dr. Suri.

Home-Made Dialysis Machine

I thought I was imagining things when I read this (it is in the UK's Daily Mail for a start, and that usually means unreliable. But here goes anyway.

The article claims that a Chinese man found dialysis at his local center was proving to be just too expensive. So he built his own dialysis machine. Yes, that's what it says. And it goes on to say that he has used it for 13 years so far. Hu, who suffers from kidney disease, made it from kitchen utensils and old medical instruments after he could no long afford hospital fees. He also makes his own dialysis fluid.

Liberally illustrated with images, it shows Hu Songweb connected to his device.

Although a Communist country, China does not have a cradle-to-grave free-at-the-point of use healthcare system.
Instead around half of the population buy basic medical insurance which covers for half the costs of their healthcare. The remainder is paid either by patients or their health insurer. However, this leaves the poorest in China struggling to meet medical bills for serious conditions.

He said two of his friends had died after building and using similar machines - hmmm, not much of a surprize there.

Now perhaps I'm being a bit cautious here, but I would NOT recommend anyone trying this themselves. No, seriously, don't try this.