Glossary / Life sciences and medicine
Dialysis
Treatment that uses a machine to remove waste and excess water from the blood in place of kidneys that no longer work.
In 1943–44, in the occupied Netherlands, Willem Kolff built an "artificial kidney" that filtered blood through cellophane tubing wound around a rotating drum[1]. His first patients did not survive, but in 1945 it saved a life for the first time.
Haemodialysis today typically means three hospital sessions a week of about four hours each. The burden on daily life is heavy, and many people waiting for a kidney transplant are on dialysis while they wait.
Related terms
- XenotransplantationTransplanting organs or tissues from animals into humans. Today the main candidates are kidneys and hearts from genetically modified pigs.
- iPS cellA body cell, such as a skin cell, given back the ability to become many kinds of cell by introducing a handful of genes.