Just read at Renal Web where National Quality Care sold their Chronic Care Dialysis facility and will be useing the proceeds to develop the wearable artifical kidney. It’s hard to imagine that someday dialyzors may be wearing an artifical kidney on a belt getting dialysis 24/7. There you go Gus this is thinking minature.
Would you have a link to that article?
Found it from RenalWEB (http://www.renalweb.com) at
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060605005757&newsLang=en
Thanks Beth!
This is a significant move towards what I envision whats coming ahead… 
ooh, ooh!! When do us ‘real’ patients get them!!??? :o 8)
Check out a patent filing here
I couldn’t get the drawings to fully display in the QuickTime window but the discription is full of new information. Could this be used with a fistula - I don’t know if I could go through my day while cannulatd. I’ m not saying I couldn’t but I’m not sure.
Interesting, many unanswered questions there, but to the best of my knowledge its just a marketing manner or exaggeration that the patient will wear it 7/24…
Most likely it will be used as nocturnal, wear all night, move around, and even go to the bathroom…no major setup or maintenance procedures…
I also feel the same way, I wouldn’t wear it cannulated to my fistula while doing daily activities unless it works differently without blood exposure.
I can’t imagine anyone wearing one 24/7 that was connected to a fistula. If its worn on a belt the lines would interfer with everything you tried to do. I’m not even so sure this would be a great setup for nocturnal. Got to be more to this than what we know.
Hi
This what I’ve been all about , just because something is the gold standard today should not mean we have to just live with it. We need doctors who see people with problems and ask “what can be done to get this person life back”. We need people to keep asking why can’t something better be done. I’m living proof of this thinking. For years the gold standard was a horror story. But someone came up the artifcial sphincter that let me live a “normal Life” This is why I ask some of questions and post some of things I do on this great board. It for the exchange of ideas and information. I had read about this portable kidney a few months back and said to my wife if I had any real money I would invest in this, this is the next step. Get us out of centers and home, let us do dialysis as we carry on our daily life. This is my pipe dream.
By the way great post
bobeleanor 
I have often joked about this with my family. If it were to become a reality that would be just fantastic!!! Although it may have an effect on the jobs of Dx nurses! I would love to work in Dx one day. As with most discoveries, they take 100 years before they are released!
Personally I’m hoping for cures for most if not all of the diseases that cause kidney deterioration so that future generations don’t need dialysis. Lin.
Hi
Yes maybe some day early in life the medical world will know who might get what and before the conditition flares a section or tiny bit of dna can be taken and then be cloned. So when the problem comes you have a ready made part. Pipe dreams
bobeleanor :?:
My father died from pkd because there was no dialysis available. My family could not have imagined that some day there would be a machine that would have enabled him to live; I now have dialysis available for me so even with the pitfalls I consider it a miracle that once was a pipe dream. Years ago when dialysis started it was a long arduous procedure but is no more. I’m thankfull for today but too am looking forward to the future with hope. I’m just one of those folks who has to have “pipe dreams”. Lin.
I think some amazing things can already be done including growing kidneys from your own DNA/Genes…but the question is will they ever do this on a wide basis? In my opinion, most likely not…that would probably not be a good business model… after all, dialysis is a business and without dialysis centers many people will lose work…
I heard they are growing kidneys in the labs. This was a couple of years ago, and at the time they said it may be available in around 10 years. Although they need the funding to keep the research going apparently. The government are pretty stingy on fund handouts.
Gus! - you pessimistic swine you!!!
I don’t think any progress/discovery/invention has ever been ‘held back’ because it might put someone out of work. Check:- cotton gin; cars; computers; robotic assembly plants; antibiotics, foreign imports of anything you care to name, et al…
:roll:
It’s reality, it won’t happen on a wide basis soon…its too costly.
Guess where it was done first?
Complete working kidneys have been grown in mice using stem cells derived from human and pig fetuses. If the feat can be repeated in humans, it will allow doctors to replace damaged organs without the need for a donor.
The Israeli team, who used three-month-old mice as recipients for the growing kidneys, were able to avoid immune rejection by using embryonic stem cells. The developing kidney takes time to acquire ‘antigen presenting cells’ which are recognised by the host immune system as foreign.
Embryonic stem cells are also able to adapt to their host, reducing the chance that they will be rejected later in development, says Camillo Ricordi, University of Miami, who works on transplanting islet cells into the pancreas to cure type I diabetes.
“Our data pinpoint a window … that may be optimal for transplantation in humans,” say the researchers in their paper in Nature Medicine. If the cells are too young, they do not develop into all the necessary cell types. But if taken too late, the developing kidney will be rejected.
The kidneys functioned well enough to produce dilute urine. But the organs did not connect up with the host’s excretory system. Instead, the researchers, led by Yair Reisner at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, connected a catheter directly into the developing organ. If the technique were used on patients, surgery would be required to connect up the developing kidney.