Wakra Hospital Dialysis Unit marks one year

Al Wakra Hospital’s Dialysis Unit is marking its first year with a promise to expand its services as a sign of commitment to providing Qatar residents with community-based healthcare services.Renal unit head and senior consultant nephrologist Dr Ihab El-Madhoun said: “Since the opening of the dialysis unit at Al Wakra Hospital, our unit has witnessed great progress in the service provided to patients.“When we first opened the unit, we had only a few patients, but now there are more than 30 patients with chronic kidney disease having regular dialysis.”Dialysis is a life-saving treatment for patients with advanced chronic kidney disease for removing excess water and waste products from the blood.It is used primarily as an artificial replacement for lost kidney function in people with renal failure.Patients who need dialysis are unable to filter waste products from their blood; if these waste products don’t get filtered from the blood, they can be toxic to the body.“The dialysis machine does the job of the kidneys, filtering the blood of waste products,” Dr El-Madhoun stated.Patients who need dialysis can be split into two groups: those suffering from chronic kidney disease or failure and those suffering from acute kidney injury.For patients with acute kidney injury, the condition can be reversible and the patient can make a full recovery after treatment.However, for those with chronic kidney disease or failure, a condition that often results from diabetes and high blood pressure, the problem usually isn’t reversible and the patient will require regular dialysis until a kidney transplant becomes available, Dr El-Madhoun explained.He mentioned that the unit provides dialysis services for both groups of patients.Patients with chronic kidney disease usually require haemodialysis three times a week, he explained, adding: “Each session takes around four hours and completing the sessions is an essential part of patients’ commitment to proper treatment. For this reason we aim to provide our patients with the most comfortable environment during their treatment.”“We operate six days a week with two shifts on three days to accommodate the number of patients coming to the dialysis unit and to provide suitable time options for patients who work during the morning,” Dr El-Madhoun said.According to him, the unit has 18 dialysis stations with the latest in dialysis technology.The stations are also separated into sections for men and women, he said.“The dialysis stations currently available at the unit perform haemodialysis, which takes blood from a vessel in the arm, cleans it through the machine and returns it. We also have plans to introduce peritoneal dialysis that can be done by patients at home,” Dr El-Madhoun mentioned.He added that all these efforts fall under the unit’s philosophy of helping patients to live their lives as normal an enjoyable as possible saying:  “We want our patients to ‘dialyse to live and not live to dialyse’.”