Artificial kidneys – Dream or reality?
Kidney disease carries a high burden for individual patients and for the medical system as a whole.
End-stage kidney disease (ESKD) or CKD-5 is associated with high mortality and decreased quality of life for many reasons including residual symptoms, pill burden, dietary restrictions, and decreased fertility. Kidney transplantation has benefits but is a limited resource, and the majority of patients with ESKD are on intermittent hemodialysis (HD) or peritoneal dialysis (PD). Home therapies can improve many of these patient-reported outcomes, but come with their own unique downsides, such as the burden of care for the patient and/or caregiver, equipment and supply storage, and utility and water purification costs.
3 new modalities undergoing development and preclinical or clinical trials. These innovative modalities, the automated wearable artificial kidney (AWAK), wearable artificial kidney (WAK), and the implantable artificial kidney (IAK), aim to decrease the burden on patients, their families, and the healthcare system.
Currently, HD and PD are tethered by large machinery, significant power usage, and large water requirement. These characteristics serve as barriers to development of wearable and implantable devices. There are different strengths and limitations of the AWAK, WAK, and IAK with regard to these barriers. None of them is available for common patient’s use yet.
Read the full text here from AJKD (American Journal of Kidney Diseases) blog an article on updates about artificial kidney: https://ajkdblog.org/2018/10/11/portable-and-implantable-artificial-kidneys-awak-wak-and-iak-oh-my/
Watch this interesting video by the Dutch Kidney Foundation about the Portable #ArtificialKidney. This project has been endorsed by ERA-EDTA.
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