Kidney disease & treatment
Treatment options
When your kidneys no longer work, you need to choose a treatment option to replace some of the work your kidneys were doing.
There are 2 kinds of treatments:
Dialysis
Dialysis uses a filtering machine or a special fluid in your belly to filter waste out of your body. Dialysis can’t replace other functions of your kidneys, but it can keep you alive while you wait for a transplant or if you can’t have or don’t want a transplant.
Transplant
A kidney transplant is a surgery where doctors take a kidney out of someone else and put it into your body. It can help you live longer and more comfortably than using dialysis. Not everyone is healthy enough to get a kidney transplant. There are 2 kinds of transplant:
- Deceased donor transplant: This is when the kidney comes from a donor who has recently died
- Living donor transplant: This is when the kidney is donated by someone who is alive (a donor can live a healthy life with only 1 kidney)
Leaders in transplant excellence
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