Home Dialysis needs to be a popular choice among chronic kidney failure patients. Benefits of Home Dialysis are high since it improves the quality of life and minimizes the risk of infection.
Patients undergoing dialysis treatments are often under added stress because of the number of trips they require to make to the hospital. The patients are deprived of their leisure time. Travel to and from the dialysis center can take a large amount of time. It can add to the cost of treatment also.
Sometimes the travel to hospitals for dialysis can even compromise their immunity and put them at risk to contract infections. Most patients who need to undergo dialysis are required to visit the center a few times a week. When they visit, they need to sit in a chair for 3 to 4 hours at a stretch, while the dialysis machine removes toxins and excess fluid, returning cleansed blood to the body. Although dialysis is usually less painful, dialysis patients are often prone to unexpected drop in blood pressure, which leads to nausea, vomiting, chronic headaches, or stomach cramps.
This process of dialysis can be a very cumbersome process and make the patient’s life center around treatment and travelling to treatment. All these issues associated with center-based dialysis treatment, is making people move towards convenient alternatives like Home Dialysis. In Home Dialysis, the patient needs to have access to a dialysis machine and a water treatment plant at their home. Depending on the condition and the treatment plan prescribed by the doctor, dialysis can take place three times a week after training under an expert.
Home dialysis improves the quality of life :
The most important benefit of opting Home Dialysis is improved quality of life. When the dialysis patients make the shift from center-based dialysis to home dialysis, they generally observe improved outcomes overall, find more free time, save extra expenses incurred due to travelling and have a better control of their health conditions. People on home dialysis experience an improved quality of life.
Home dialysis is less time consuming :
Normally dialysis patients spend several hours a day in a dialysis center, and miss out on quality time with their family and friends, their hobbies or even a normal life. Home dialysis changes that and gives patients time to pursue their hobbies and engage with the family, because it saves the time which was earlier used in travelling to the center and waiting for appointments. Home dialysis gives patients more freedom to schedule their activities and treatment and a chance to live a normal life.
Home dialysis minimizes the risk of infection :
One more major risk that patients with chronic kidney failure experience is the increased risk of infection due to visiting the dialysis center and while traveling to the center. Home Dialysis reduces this risk and also reduces the stress on patients because the treatment is done in the comfort of their own house and people.
All these factors make the dialysis patients’ lives easier and gives more flexibility for them to live their lives. Hence Home Dialysis needs to be a popular choice among chronic kidney failure patients.
Dr. Prashant C Dheerendra
Consultant Nephrologist
Apollo Dialysis clinics, Bengaluru
