Choosing a Treatment Option When Kidneys Fail
Choosing a dialysis treatment option requires some planning. When your kidneys do not work as fast as they should they may reach a point where they are too weak to keep you healthy or even too weak to keep you alive. There are three basic ways to treat kidney failure:
- Hemo-dialysis (HD) involves passing the blood through a filter in a machine and then returning it back to the patient.
- Peritoneal dialysis (PD) uses the body's own membrane in the abdomen to substitute for the machine
- Transplantation (click here)
Please watch the following videos courtesy of our partners at Davita for more clarification:
Introduction to Peritoneal Dialysis (PD)
Introduction to Hemodialysis (HD)
Bruce's Story: A Davita Home Hemodialysis Patient
Some useful articles and brochures about dialysis
An Overview of Home Hemodialysis
Choosing a Treatment for Kidney Failure
Hemodialysis Access Handout (kidneyfund.org)
For more information, please visit http://www.kidneysmart.org