What are the Treatment Options for Kidney Failure

1. Treatment on the causes of Kidney Failure. For example, for patients with inadequate blood supply or blood loss, body fluid or water supplement is needed. While for the infection, treatment targeting at the infection is needed.

2. As the kidney has lost its function, doctors may temporarily treat it with dialysis method, which can assist eliminating the toxin and waste in vivo. For the chronic Renal Failure patient who has no proper treatment or whose condition is hard to control, when it turns from acute disease to chronic Renal Failure, he will have to do dialysis all life long because of Uremia.

3. Diet Controlling. Surgical specialist point out that for patients with Renal Failure, as the kidney function has been damaged, the food eaten by them will produce toxin and waste in vivo and can not be discharged from body. Therefore, patients should pay special attention to the diet, and avoid the burden to body.
a) Protein limitation: for patients without dialysis, as the kidney can not discharge the waste of protein metabolism, it will aggravate the condition; for patients who have already started doing dialysis, the point is that they will lose protein when doing dialysis, so they should maintain the body needs according to the nutritionist’s suggestion.
b) Limit the intake of sodium. Because salt is rich in sodium, if there is too much sodium in the body of Renal Failure patients, it will result in hyperhydropoxis, which will lead to cardiopulmonary failure or the aggravation of Renal Failure. But do not use low sodium salt, because of high-potassium.
c) Limit the intake of potassium. The accumulated potassium in vivo will result in muscle weakness, or even worse, which can cause arrhythmia and then heart failure.
d) Limit the intake of phosphorus. As the excessive phosphorus in vivo will cause the loss of calcium, so doctors will control the phosphorus content in blood with the assist of medicine, in case of osteoporosis.
e) Water intake. If too much water is taken, there will be edema or heart failure when kidneys can’t discharge it. So it is very important to control the intake of water. Doctors will suggest the acceptable daily intake by the urine volume or dialyzed water volume of individual patient. Usually the water intake should be the urine volume of the day before plus 500-750c.
4. Kidney transplant. For some end Kidney Failure patients, they need long-term dialysis. Kidney transplant can bring a better life for them when they are in proper condition. However kidney transplant is a big program, although the current medical technology is quite advanced, it still needs many evaluations, so that the chance of success can be greater.

Expert's notice: The above treatment is all adjuvant treatment, while the key lies in the recovering of damaged inherent kidney cells. Although dialysis can relieve the patient's pain, it can not recover the damaged kidneys. Moreover, only 1% of the transplanted kidney can live for 10 years. Therefore, kidney disease needs an early treatment, targeting at the damaged kidney and blocking the progress of renal fibrosis, thus achieveing the goal of effective treatment.