Know a bit about kidney failure
Kidney failure is when the kidneys become unable to function properly so that impurities and water build up in the body and make you feel ill and tired and make your ankles swell.
There are many conditions that cause kidney failure. Some of the more common are:
- Diabetes. Too much sugar in the blood is toxic to the fine tubes in the kidneys that filter out blood impurities.
- High blood pressure. The fine blood vessels in the kidneys are very sensitive to the strain of high blood pressure, which in turn affects the filtering mechanism.
- Inflammation of the kidneys (glomerulonephritis, pyelonephritis).
- A birth defect called polycystic kidney.
Know a bit about how kidney failure is treated
Diet. By controlling what they eat and drink, particularly salt and proteins, patients can reduce the amount of impurities that collect in their blood so that their kidneys have less to do.
Drugs that lower the blood pressure often help.
Dialysis. There are two main types:
- In peritoneal dialysis a special fluid, which is designed to soak up the blood impurities that a kidney normally filters out, is run into the cavity of the patient’s tummy through a plastic tube. It is left there for a while and then drained out taking the impurities with it.
- In haemodialysis, the patient’s blood is pumped through an artificial kidney machine, which filters out the blood impurities in much the same way as the normal kidney does.
