SOMERSET, NJ (Ivanhoe Newswire)— More than 661,000 Americans have kidney failure; of these, 468,000 are on dialysis, a lifesaving, but time-consuming procedure that removes waste and excess water from the body. For many, it means repeated trips to a special dialysis center and hours hooked to the dialysis machine. A newly FDA-approved home system is helping patients do dialysis themselves.
This headboard is just the latest do-it-yourself project for Tracey Amadi. Right now, she’s happy to stay at home, since she’s higher risk for COVID-19 complications. This mother of three lost her husband more than a decade ago, and immediately after, learned she had life-threatening kidney disease.
“I knew that my kidneys were going bad, but I didn’t know it got to that point,” Amadi expressed.
Tracey needed dialysis to do the work her kidneys could not.
“I never saw a machine. I never knew what to expect. So, as they were wheeling me into the room to do my first treatment, I just cried like a baby,” recalled Amadi.
In 2013, Tracey’s oldest son donated a kidney as part of a transplant chain, and Tracey received a new kidney. But two years ago, that organ began to fail. This time, Tracey had a new option. She is the first in the U.S. to use a new portable home-dialysis system called the Tablo. Patients are trained to use the machine, hooking themselves up through a connection in an arm vein called a fistula.
“The patient will then insert two needles into that fistula to get the blood to the machine so that it can remove excess water and clean the blood,” explained Sunit Kabaria, MD, a nephrologist at the Kidney and Hypertension Center.
For Tracey, it eliminates several trips a week to the dialysis center. She calls the Tablo her lifeline.
“I named my machine Tammie. And Tammie with an ‘I-E’- not a ‘Y’. Without it, I wouldn’t be here,” shared Amadi.
The Tablo has been used in hospital settings for several years but received FDA approval for home use in March, just as the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. It is covered by Medicare and most major health insurance companies.
Contributors to this news report include: Cyndy McGrath, Executive Producer & Field Producer; Kirk Manson, Videographer; Roque Correa, Editor.
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Sources:
MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS
RESEARCH SUMMARY
TOPIC: TABLO TAMMIE: HOME KIDNEY DIALYSIS
REPORT: MB #4837
KIDNEY FAILURE: Kidney failure, also known as end-stage renal disease, is the inability of an individual’s kidneys to meet physical requirements daily. Those with ESRD have their kidneys functioning below ten percent, which leads to a buildup of toxins in the body. Kidney failure creates multiple symptoms with some being easily recognizable,while others are subtle. Individuals living with kidney failure will typically experience several stages of illness before receiving an end-stage renal disease diagnosis. Because it is a life-threatening condition, people with end-stage renal disease require dialysis or a kidney transplant to survive.
DIALYSIS: More than 500,000 Americans undergo dialysis treatments three or more times each week and it is a treatment that does some of the things done by healthy kidneys. It is needed when your own kidneys can no longer take care of your body’s needs. When your kidneys fail, dialysis keeps your body in balance by removing waste, salt and extra water to prevent them from building up in the body, keeping a safe level of certain chemicals in your blood, such as potassium, sodium and bicarbonate and helping to control blood pressure. There are two types of dialysis – hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. With hemodialysis, an artificial kidney is used to remove waste, extra chemicals, and fluid from your blood. With peritoneal dialysis your blood is cleaned inside your body. There are two major kinds of peritoneal dialysis – Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis (CAPD) and Automated Peritoneal Dialysis (APD). Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis is the only type of peritoneal dialysis that is done without machines. You do this yourself, usually four or five times a day at home and/or at work. Automated Peritoneal Dialysis (APD) usually is done at home using a special machine called a cycler. It is like CAPD except that several cycles occur. Each cycle usually lasts an hour and exchanges are done throughout the night while you sleep.
(Source: https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/dialysisinfo)
TABLO HEMODIALYSIS HOME TREATMENT: On March 31, 2020 TabloDialysis received FDA clearance for home use. TabloDialysis is an all-in-one device that purifies water and produces dialysate on demand eliminating the need for water treatment infrastructure. This, combined with an easy to use automated software platform and cloud connectivity, reduces staff burden and improves the patient experience. Tablo’s user friendly interface, quick training, simple setup, and sensor-based automation make home hemodialysis an easy, efficient, and flexible option for chronic dialysis patients. Dr. Sunit Kabaria, nephrologist at the Kidney and Hypertension Center of New Jersey said, “The patients are taught to hook themselves up to the machine. Technology plays a part in that we can train patients at the center in under a week to use the machine. Because of technology, the nurses have access to the machine by Wi-Fi to see how the patients are doing in the treatments and the interface on the machine itself actually walks the patient through how to set up the machine. So, the technology is the simplicity of it.”
(Sources: https://library.annanurse.org/anna/live/73/page/651/221, Sunit Kabaria, MD, Nephrologist, Kidney and Hypertension Center)
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS REPORT, PLEASE CONTACT:
KEVIN KNIGHT
206-451-4823
If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Marjorie Bekaert Thomas at mthomas@ivanhoe.com
