Hello and welcome to the zero to finals podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be

going through renal dialysis. If you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can follow

along at zero to finals.com slash dialysis or in the renal section of the zero to finals medicine book.

So let's get straight into it.

Dialysis is a method of performing the filtration function of the kidneys,

but doing it artificially.

So taking over the normal role of the kidneys artificially

when somebody's kidneys have started to fail.

It is used in patients who have

end-stage renal failure or who have complications from renal failure, and we'll talk about the

indications in a second, and it involves removing excessive fluid, solutes and waste products

from the blood just in the way that the kidneys would normally do.

So first let's start with the indications for acute dialysis. So this is dialysis in an acutely

unwell patient. And you can remember this using the pneumonic of all the vowels, which is

AEI-O-U. And these spell out the indications for acute dialysis in patients with

severe acute kidney injury. So the A is for acidosis. So if there's a severe acidosis that's

not responding to treatment, E is for electrolyte abnormalities, particularly severe or unresponsive

hypercalaemia or high potassium level. I is for

intoxication and it's used in overdose of certain medications where the only way to remove that is

using dialysis. O is for edema, so severe and unresponsive edema or fluid building up in the lungs,

where the patient urgently needs that fluid removing for the lungs,

and you for uremia, where there are symptoms of severe uremia,

...