Kidney Failure

Question 1

What do the kidneys do?

Answer 1

Remove waste substances from the blood.

Question 2

What happens if your kidneys don’t work properly?

Answer 2

Waste substances build up in the blood and you lose the ability to control the levels of ions and water in your body.

Question 3

How is a person kept alive if they have kidney failure?

Answer 3

By having a dialysis treatment - where machines do the job of the kidneys.
Or they can have a kidney treatment.

Question 4

What do dialysis machines do?

Answer 4

Filter the blood.

Question 5

Explain how dialysis works

Answer 5

See page 86

Question 6

What can happen when a person has a kidney transplant?

Answer 6

It can be rejected by the patients immune system - the foreign antigens in the donor kidney are attacked by the patients antibodies.

Question 7

What precautions are taken to prevent this from happening?

Answer 7

A donor with a tissue type that closely matches the patient is chosen. Tissue type is based on antigens.
The patient is treated with drugs that suppress the immune system l, so that their immune system won’t attack the transplanted kidney.