Perspectives on dialysis therapy

Once, patients with kidney failure faced a bleak, brief future. But now, kidney failure can successfully be treated--sometimes for decades--with dialysis. Although the technology is simple and largely painless, dialysis treatments last hours and often involve additional hours of travel to and from dialysis centers three or more days each week. This demanding schedule--combined with the life-or-death importance of treatment--involves patients and their families in a unique long-term relationship with clinicians, nurses, and technicians.