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An Overview of Chronic Kidney Disease

Renal Replacement therapies are generally used for managing Chronic Kidney Disease. It is a condition where your kidneys can’t filter blood the waythey should, anymore. This leads to waste build-up in the blood. Such a condition leads to many dangerous diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc.

The causes of Chronic Kidney Disease mainly include high blood pressure and diabetes.

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Too much glucose, also called sugar, in your blooddamages your kidneys’ filters. Over time, your kidneys can become so damaged that they no longer do a good job filtering wastes and extra fluid from your blood.

High blood pressure can damage blood vessels in the kidneys, so they don’t work as well. If the blood vessels in your kidneys are damaged, your kidneys may not work as well to remove wastes and extra fluid from your body. Extra fluid inthe blood vessels may then raise blood pressure even more, creating a dangerous cycle.

First Sign of Chronic Kidney Disease

Often, the first sign of kidney disease from diabetes is protein in your urine. When the filters are damaged, a protein called albumin, which you need to stay healthy, passes out of your blood and into your urine. A healthy kidney doesn’t let albumin pass from the blood into the urine.

Traditional Treatment for Chronic Kidney Disease

CKD in its initial stage can be controlled with medications. These include medicines for high BP, anemia, swelling, and cholesterol levels. They also include medicines for protecting bones and reducing wastes in your blood.

But, CKD just like many chronic diseases are hard to detect at the initial stages as it shares a lot of symptoms with other diseases. Moreover, its symptoms are quite generic. Also, the signs of CKD are rarely visible physically. One canonlycome to know about it through lab tests. But bythe time testing is done, CKD would have already reached at an advanced stage.

Treatment for end-stage CKD includes Hemodialysis (or simply dialysis) and kidney transplant. Hemodialysis is a treatment to filter wastes and water from your blood, as your kidneys did when they were healthy. It helps regulate blood pressure and balance important minerals, such as potassium, sodium, and calcium, in your blood.

A kidney transplant involves surgically placing a healthy kidney from a donor into your body. Transplanted kidneys can come from deceased or living donors.

But these two last resorts can be very expensive for a patient. Kidney transplants come with their own set of complications such as availability or donor rejection rate.

What changes with Allo-Hemodialysis?

Honestly, a lot.

This latest kidney treatment in India, although still in clinical trials, holds the potential to make RRT inexpensive. Thiswillchangethewholedynamicsconnectedwith KCD. This latest treatment is the result of the collaboration between two doctors – Dr. K S Nayak (chief nephrologist in Virinchi Hospital, Hyderabad) and Dr. Peter Kotanko (head of Biomedical Evidence Generation and Renal Research Institute in New York).

The project has already completed animal trials and will move toward human trials once permission is granted. If everything goes according to the plan, the treatment should be available in India within the next 3–4 years. This latest kidney treatment in India will cut the dialysis cost by one-tenth.

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What happens in Allo-Hemodialysis?

In allo-hemodialysis, a family member (also called buddy) will be replacing the dialyzer or the dialysis machine. S/he will temporarily donate their kidney to the patient for removing excess fluids and wastes from the patient’s body. The patient and the buddy will be pinned to a small dialysis machine, which will then pump the blood from the patient to the buddy.

Once the cleaning is done, the blood will be transferred back to the patient. So, rather than physically donating the kidney, the blood would simply be diverted to the buddy’s body for cleaning.

Will there be any side effects of allo-hemodialysis?

Till now, the researchers have found no side effects of AlloHD. When done on pigs, no side effects suchas infectionsor other complicationswereseenonthebuddypig. Theresearchers haveassured that since there’s no transfer of antigenic material between the patient and the buddy, this latest kidney treatment in India will pose no harm. The only effect that the buddy will be facing will be the increased output due to taking on the patient’s load.

What is the scope of allo-hemodialysis?

This latest kidney treatment in India is meant to cause a revolution in the healthcare industry. It has the capability to make Hemodialysis a thing of the past. Patients suffering from acute kidney diseases will highly benefit from it. Its drastically reduced complexity makes AlloHD particularly attractive for low-resource settings.

Unlike traditional dialysis, AlloHD has to be done just twice or thrice a week. The patients will notice a significant change with just six sessions. Researchers have also suggested that just three allo-hemodialysis sessions in a week are enough to keep the urea concentration levels at normal.

Summing it up

Allo-hemodialysis, being hailed as the latest kidneytreatment in India, has the potential to provide relief to patients without burning a hole in their pockets. Presently, the model is based on urea purification, but more research is being done to include other ions such as bicarbonate and potassium.

Although limited to acute kidney diseases at present, this latest kidney treatment in India holds a lot of potential in terms of accessible healthcare. The main aim of the two doctors is to provide treatment options to patients suffering from KCD.

If you are looking for the best kidneytreatment inIndia, you are at the right place at the right time! Trust GoMedii with your treatment and, we assure you a top-notch and hassle-free process.

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