No one is exempted from having a kidney problem. Even for those people
who are health conscious and carefully choose the food they eat, there
will come a time that they need to undergo some medical checkups to make
sure that their kidneys are still functioning well and that they do not
have other health problems that can be associated with kidney diseases.
Identifying kidney problems in an early stage is one way of preventing
simple difficulties in becoming severe and chronic. It can also avoid
further treatments which are most of the times costly, painful, and
inconvenient. Being diagnosed with severe chronic kidney disease can
leave the doctors and patients with no other choice but to go through
with the process of dialysis peritoneal.
Dialysis peritoneal is a popular method in treating a person with severe
chronic kidney problems. This kind of treatment uses own body tissues
of the patient inside the belly to work as a filter. This filter is
necessary because intestines are located in the abdominal cavity which
is the space between the abdominal wall and the spine. Fluid is being
filtered through a permanent tube in the abdomen and flushed out while
the patient is unconscious. Compared to other kidney treatments,
dialysis peritoneal is less expensive because a patient does not need to
be confined in a medical facility for a long period of time. The
patient can be sent back home few days after the surgery although
regular visits need to be done to ensure its effectiveness and to
monitor improvements. This is also necessary to prevent unwanted things
to happen while the tube is inside the patient's body.
There are two kinds of dialysis peritoneal: permanent cycling peritoneal
and ambulatory peritoneal dialysis. The former kind of dialysis is
performed using a cycler machine every evening while the patient is
asleep to make several fluid exchanges automatically. This is more
convenient form of dialysis because it gives freedom from daytime fluid
exchanges and it is commonly linked with lower rates of peritonisitis; a
kind of infection which can cause by the catheter inside the abdomen.
On the other hand, the latter type of dialysis is done by instilling two
to three liters of fluid at a time into the patient's abdominal cavity
through a flexible plastic catheter which is implanted in the abdominal
wall .For a period of hours, fluid is allowed to stay in the abdominal
cavity while gradually absorbs waste products and toxins form the body
until the fluid is drained out and replaced with fresh fluid.
Having a tube permanently inside the patient's body is one of the
disadvantages of dialysis peritoneal. Aside from the uncomfortable
feeling that a foreign body resides inside the abdomen, patients under
this kind of treatment can be prone to allergies and infections
especially if the patient is not being taken cared of properly. This can
be very challenging especially if the patients do not have the ability
to take of their needs and manage their personal hygiene.
