Artificial kidneys filter blood to remove waste products and are used when the kidneys have difficulty functioning or have reached a state of acute failure. Wearable artificial kidneys have been developed as a temporary measure, while researchers work on developing an implantable replacement kidney using nanotechnology. Medical technology has made tremendous leaps in the 20th century.
An artificial kidney is a medical device that performs the function of a missing or damaged kidney, filtering the blood to remove waste products and returning purified blood to the body. The technology behind artificial organs is constantly improving and refining. As of 2009, an implantable artificial kidney had not yet been developed, but researchers had created wearable artificial kidneys, an important step along the road to an implantable replacement for a malfunctioning kidney.
Artificial kidneys are used when the kidneys have difficulty functioning and when the kidneys have reached a state of acute failure. The best known and most used form of kidney is the hemodialysis machine, a medical device that can be attached to a patient to clean his blood. Patients with acute kidney failure may require daily hemodialysis, and treatment requires going to a clinic that offers the procedure, which can be time-consuming and expensive as well as frustrating for people who are trying to lead relatively normal lives.
As an alternative to conventional hemodialysis, doctors have developed portable, wearable artificial kidneys that can be used as temporary measures for up to three days. These devices use battery power to operate and can increase a patient’s sense of freedom by allowing them to avoid conventional dialysis treatments.
Researchers have also been working on developing devices that could be fitted as replacement kidneys in a patient with damaged or severely compromised kidneys. Developing such a device hinges on figuring out how to replicate the complex natural filter inside the kidneys in a form small enough to be implanted in the human body. Nanotechnology has the greatest potential in the eyes of researchers who are struggling to design an implantable replacement kidney.
Currently, patients can use an artificial kidney while waiting for a transplant or to temporarily relieve stress on the kidneys. Hemodialysis is sometimes used to scrub the blood in cases where a patient develops severe toxicity or to support patients who are experiencing systemic organ failure and other medical issues that place strain on the kidneys.
Medical technology is a topic of immense interest to many researchers, as it has far-reaching potential applications. An artificial kidney is just one among an assortment of medical devices that would have been unthinkable to the early pioneers of medicine, representing the tremendous leaps medicine made in the 20th century.
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