What happens when someone's kidneys fail to function at a sustainable level? Dialysis or transplantation. For many people in developed countries, kidney dialysis involves frequent trips to hospitals and spending hours per visit connected to a machine. The dialysis machine slowly filters waste and other toxins out of a patient's blood, thus taking the job of the failed kidneys.
Kidney transplants are far from an ideal remedy as well. First of all, many people who need transplants will not get them. There are fewer donated kidneys than people who need them. Secondly, a transplanted kidney runs the risk of rejection from the patient's body. For this reason, the patient must take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of his/her life. The blood will be cleaned, but the tradeoff is a greater vulnerability to infection.
One solution to these problems would be an artificial kidney implant that replaces a failed natural kidney. Since it is manufactured, such an implant would compensate for the limited supply of donated kidneys. An implant, being inorganic, would not require drugs to compromise a patient's immune system.
A noninvasive solution would be a portable dialysis machine. A “wearable kidney” would eliminate the need for surgery, and so it would probably be much safer. The current design is worn like a belt. Such a device would have a lot of potential. If it were affordable and easy to use, then its group of users would exceed victims of kidney failure. People who just had reduced kidney function could employ this simple treatment. What about poison victims? Anyone with dangerously high levels of toxins in their blood could be easily helped.
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