Comparison of Dialysis and Kidney Transplant

Dialysis and Kidney Transplant are two important substitutive therapies for the patients with End Stage Renal Failure. They supplement each other and both have advantages and disadvantages.

Dialysis is used to replace the native kidneys, but it still has many defects at the same time. For the patients with End Stage Renal Failure, during their wait for Kidney Transplant, they need to depend on dialysis to maintain their life. Moreover, after Kidney Transplant, many patients may encounter anuria, rejection reaction or failure of Kidney Transplant so they also need dialysis to maintain their life. Therefore, dialysis is the base of Kidney Transplant.

Moreover, the kidney source is rare. Although some countries have take measures to collect corpse kidneys, but the kidneys source can not meet their need of the patients with Renal Failure. However, with the technology development, the property has much improvement. In theory, dialysis will play a more important role in maintaining the life of patients with Renal Failure.

For family dialysis, the survival rate is about 65% in 6 years, which is approximately the same with that of living donor Kidney Transplant. And the survival rate of hospital dialysis is 50% within 6 years, which is also just the same with that of cadaveric Kidney Transplant. Therefore, dialysis and Kidney Transplant have no much difference in maintaining the life expectancy of the patients with Renal Failure. In fact, at present, dialysis still does not have a perfect state. It not only can not reach the filtration function of glomeruli, but also even can not remove the middle molecular metabolic products. Although dialysis has been improved greatly in recent years, it can still not replace the whole function of glomeruli and renal tubular. We all know that kidneys not only can filter blood, but also have important endocrine function such as producing renin, erythrogenin, prostaglandin and so on. However, dialysis can not meet these physiological functions. Therefore, the complications of dialysis can be corrected by Kidney Transplant.

However, the patients with Renal Failure should also take into the complications of Kidney Transplant and serious immune rejection reaction after Kidney Transplant.


From the above, it can be seen that dialysis and Kidney Transplant have both advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, the patients need to choose a suitable therapy based on their own disease condition and physical condition. However, both of the two therapies have too many side effects on the patients. Therefore, the patients should receive a better therapy instead of Kidney Transplant and dialysis.