Hemodialysis: Symptoms, Classification, Diagnosis & Recovery

During treatments, you sit or recline in a chair while your blood flows through a dialyzer, which is a filter that cleans your blood like an artificial kidney. The procedure involves following stages:

Preparation: Your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature are all measured. The skin around your access site, which is the spot where blood leaves your body and then returns during treatment, is cleansed.

Starting: Two needles are placed via the access site into your arm and taped in place to keep them secure during hemodialysis. The needles are connected to a dialyzer by a flexible plastic tubing. The dialyzer filters a few ounces of blood at a time through one tube, allowing wastes and excess fluids to pass from your blood into dialysate, a cleansing fluid. Through the second tube, filtered blood is returned to your body.

Symptoms: As excess fluid is removed from your body, you may experience nausea and abdominal pains — especially if you only get hemodialysis three times a week rather than more frequently. If you're having trouble with the procedure, talk to your doctor about how to reduce side effects by changing the speed of your hemodialysis, your medication, or your hemodialysis fluids.

Monitoring: Because your blood pressure and heart rate may fluctuate as extra fluid is drained from your body, your blood pressure and heart rate will be measured multiple times throughout each treatment.

Finishing: The needles are withdrawn from your access site when hemodialysis is completed, and a pressure dressing is put to prevent bleeding. It's possible that your weight will be measured again. After then, you're free to do anything you want until your next session.

Between hemodialysis sessions, you can help your hemodialysis obtain the best potential results by:

Choosing the correct meals to eat: Proper nutrition can help you enhance your hemodialysis results as well as your overall health. You'll need to keep a close eye on your fluid, protein, salt, potassium, and phosphorus intake while on hemodialysis. A nutritionist can assist you in creating a tailored food plan based on your weight, personal tastes, residual kidney function, and any other medical concerns you may have, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

Taking your drugs exactly as directed: Follow your health-care provider's directions to the letter.