Question Video: Recalling One of the Long Term Solutions for Kidney Failure | Nagwa Question Video: Recalling One of the Long Term Solutions for Kidney Failure | Nagwa

Question Video: Recalling One of the Long Term Solutions for Kidney Failure Biology • Second Year of Secondary School

Kidney failure can be treated with a long-term solution involving a medical procedure. What medical procedure can be used to treat a small amount of kidney failure patients?

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Video Transcript

Kidney failure can be treated with a long-term solution involving a medical procedure. What medical procedure can be used to treat a small amount of kidney-failure patients?

Kidney, or renal, failure occurs when the kidneys stop functioning properly and the blood in the body does not get filtered like it should. There are two main treatments for kidney failure: dialysis and kidney transplants.

Kidney dialysis is when a patient is hooked up to a machine that filters the blood in place of the failing kidneys. Dialysis is not limited in the number of patients who can receive it because it is performed by an apparatus that is easily accessible and in wide supply. However, a patient with kidney failure will typically need to undergo dialysis three to four times a week, often for hours at a time. This can be a big disruption to the patient’s daily life.

An alternative treatment for kidney failure is a kidney transplant. This is when a healthy kidney of a donor is removed and implanted in the body of a kidney failure patient. Remember, humans have two kidneys, so unlike some other organ transplants, kidneys can be donated by living donors. The new donor kidney in the host takes over the function of the failing diseased kidneys.

Kidney transplants are severely limited by the number of donors available. There are significantly more patients in need of kidney transplants than there are available donors. This means that the medical procedure that can only be used to treat a small amount of kidney-failure patients is a kidney transplant.

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