The Challenges of Home Dialysis (NYT)

[iolaire]

The Challenges of Home Dialysis
Dialysis at home takes discipline, skill, will and support
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/well/live/the-challenges-of-home-dialysis.html

Various personal stories plus this:
If Washington policymakers have their way, a growing number of older adults with serious, irreversible kidney disease will do home dialysis. In July, the Trump administration made that clear in an executive order meant to alter how patients with kidney disease are managed in the United States.

Changing care for the sickest — about 726,000 people with end-stage kidney disease — is a top priority. Of these patients, 88 percent receive treatment at centers and 12 percent get home dialysis.

By 2025, officials say, 80 percent of end-stage kidney disease patients should receive home dialysis or kidney transplants. Older adults are sure to be affected: Half of the 125,000 people diagnosed with kidney failure each year are 65 or older.

Home dialysis has potential benefits: It’s convenient; recovery times are shorter; therapy can be delivered more often and individualized; and “quality of life tends to be much better,” said Dr. Frank Liu, director of home hemodialysis at the Rogosin Institute in New York City.