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Week of August 15th Take-Home Dialysis Doing Dialysis in the Comfort of Your Home
Guests: Scott Rasgon, MD, and Rafi Minasian, MD
Take-Home Dialysis: Doing Dialysis in the Comfort of Your Home
Welcome to KidneyTalk!
Wouldn’t
it be great if dialysis was like the Domino’s Pizza
delivery policy...
delivered in 30 minutes or less? Although 30-minute dialysis is still a long way
off, shorter hemodialysis treatments are here today and growing in popularity,
especially since they can be performed in the comfort of your own home.
On this
week’s show, Lori Hartwell and Stephen Furst talk with two physicians who
address both the convenience and clinical benefits of daily home hemodialysis.
After
decades of traditional three-times-a-week hemodialysis performed in-center,
studies are now showing that more dialysis is better, and that daily home
hemodialysis is better still. For today's kidney patients, “take-home” dialysis
is a wonderful option. Stephen is presently looking into home hemodialysis as an
alternative to his current in-center treatments, and Lori agrees that if her
transplant were to fail, home hemodialysis would be the first modality she would
look at.
For many
dialysis patients, however, one of the biggest fears of home hemodialysis is the
fear of having to stick themselves with the needles. Dr. Rafi Minasian, Medical
Director of Glendale Kidney Center, located in Southern California, offers great
hope when he says, "In our program so far, it has never taken more than two days
for a patient to learn how to stick themselves." Dr. Scott Rasgon, Director of
Nephrology at Kaiser-Sunset in Los Angeles, offers similar reassurance: "We tell
them we will not let them go home until they are safe."
So why go
home with dialysis? The benefits for patients are tremendous. Patients say they
feel better and can lead more active lives again. "After five days, you see a
remarkable increase in energy and overall feeling of well-being," says Dr.
Rasgon. Dr. Minasian adds, "You're surprised at how much better the patients do
and how much better they look."
The
difference is that short daily home hemodialysis (as compared to nocturnal home
hemodialysis, performed while you sleep) consists of short treatments--perhaps
two hours in length--performed five or six days a week. As opposed to
conventional three-times-a-week dialysis, more frequent dialysis more closely
resembles the activity of a healthy kidney, which cleanses the blood
continually.
Some of
the benefits of daily home hemodialysis include improvement in blood pressure
control, a reduction in needed medications, better phosphorous control, improved
energy, and enhanced quality of sleep. "All of the things that are wrong in a
patient with kidney failure are improved with home hemodialysis," says Dr.
Minasian.
"Short of
receiving a transplant, I have never seen patients do so much better," says Dr.
Rasgon.
As kidney
patients, it might not be just Domino's ringing your doorbell these days; it
could be a friend who’s stopping by to visit while you're doing hemodialysis at
home. That's better than a high-sodium, high-fat pizza any day!
Information on home hemodialysis can be found on the
following websites:
