Kidney failure

• Kidney failure occurs when the kidneys stop functioning, leading to the build-up of waste substances in the bloodstream and the inability to regulate water and ion levels.
• The main consequences of kidney failure are sickness and potentially death if not treated.
• Mild kidney disease can be treated with medication, but the only treatment for kidney failure is dialysis or kidney transplant.
• Dialysis machines are artificial kidneys that filter a patient's blood for them, even if theirs don't work properly.
• In dialysis, the patient's blood passes into the machine through the circuit and then back out into the patient.
• While in the machine, the patient's blood comes into contact with the dialysis fluid, which is a mixture that contains the same concentrations of water and other molecules as healthy blood.
• The dialysis fluid contains a reasonable quantity of glucose ions and amino acids but no urea because healthy blood doesn't have any urea.
• If the patient has too much of anything like too many ions or too much water, they will diffuse across the partially permeable membrane into the dialysis fluid because there will be a concentration gradient, bringing the patient's blood levels back to normal.
• After a while, equilibrium is reached and nothing diffuses anymore, so to prevent this, the dialysis fluid is periodically changed.
• Doctors help patients by giving them medication to suppress their immune system, but unfortunately, it doesn't always work.
• Even though transplants tend to be better and much cheaper than dialysis, there's not enough available organs to give everybody a transplant, so many people still have to rely on dialysis.
• Most of the donor kidneys for transplants come from people who have recently died, but living people can also donate to kidney as we're all born with two of them.
• As the patient's blood passes through the machine, it loses all the junk it doesn't want, becoming much cleaner and can then be returned to the patient.
• The dialysis fluid is constantly replaced with new fluid being pumped in from the bottom and older fluid passing out of the top, creating a concentration gradient that causes the blood to lose all the junk it doesn't want, such as extra ions, amino acids, and most of the urea.
• An alternative to dialysis is a kidney transplant, a surgical procedure where a healthy kidney from one person is transferred to a patient that needs it.
• The treatment of dialysis is very time consuming, requiring patients to go into hospital three to four days a week and be hooked up to the machine for three to four hours each time.
• A kidney transplant is a major surgery with a small risk of something going wrong, but the main risk for the patient is that the organ will be rejected, which is when a transplanted organ is attacked by the patient's own immune system, treating it as a foreign object and wanting to destroy it.
• The cost of running dialysis is high and patients will need it continually for the rest of their life.
• Dialysis is an unpleasant experience that can cause problems like blood clots or infections.
• treatments?

  dialysis and kidney transport
• what is kidney failure?

  kidney stops working properly so excess water,mineral ions and urea builod up in the blood
• why may kidney be rejected?

  antigens on the transplanted kidney cells don't match antigens on patients cells therefore antibodies attack it as it is detected as foreign
• why do antigens have to be similar to patient?

  reduce chance of rejection
• why must patient take immunosupressants for like if recieve a kidney transplant?

  Prevent rejection.