Being diagnosed with kidney failure is frustrating for most patients. In this stage of chronic kidney disease, the patients have lost almost eighty-five percent of their kidney ability. Thus, their kidneys do not work well enough to keep the persons alive. Chronic diseases, including kidney failure, are often associated with an inability to do normal daily activities and chores and limited life quality. Hence, it is essential to know how much a kidney failure might cause changes in your life and how likely you will be able to live with complete kidney failure.

Complete kidney failure stage

Kidney has some important roles to the body function, which include filtering blood, regulating hormones, balancing body fluids, keeping bones healthy, and helping make red blood cells. Thus, a complete kidney failure will likely to affect your body functions significantly. Commonly, kidney disease stages are divided into 5 main stages based on the degree of severity. In the earlier stages, mild symptoms of kidney failure problems can be improved through proper treatment plans and dieting. However, the latest stage, which is stage 5 may require a kidney transplant in order to keep the patient alive.

How long can a person live with complete kidney failure

Being diagnosed with later stage kidney disease is not a death penalty. Although the illness may influence many aspects of your life and body functions, it does not mean that you should necessarily stop everything you used to do and want to do. As long as a person suffering from complete kidney failure undergoes proper treatments, they will be able to have a good quality of life. Proper treatments will help body functions, even though the kidney cannot perform its job properly any longer. There are two major treatments used for kidney failure; dialysis and kidney transplantation.

Without these treatments intended for this stage 5 kidney failure, the diagnosed patient with complete kidney failure will have excessive accumulated body toxins that cannot be secreted out of the body. With this excessive amount of toxin build ups, the body cannot maintain its proper functions. As a result, a condition called uremia occurs, which also influences both physical and emotional state of the patient. Following this condition, death may come within a few days to weeks, before the body finally shuts down. The condition of kidney failure that is not followed by any treatments may lead to death that occurs commonly in orderly series of physical changes, which include:

• Loss of appetite and excessive fluids.
• Spending the day by sleeping.
• Restlessness and the feeling of extreme fatigue and powerlessness.
• Disorientation and inability to recognize familiar faces.
• Changes in breathing pattern.
• Changes in color and decreased temperature.
• Stop breathing.

Hemodialysis and kidney transplantation for keeping life longer

Hemodialysis and kidney transplantation are employed to keep a person with a complete kidney failure live longer. Hemodialysis is a treatment that helps remove wastes and fluids from the body the kidney cannot do any longer.

This procedure pumps the blood through soft tubes to a dialysis machine where it goes through a filter before pumped back into the body.

Quite differently, kidney transplantation is done by placing a healthy kidney into a body of a person with a complete kidney failure. This kidney may come from someone who has died or a living donor. Although the kidney is replaced, the kidney transplant is not considered as an exact cure for a kidney failure. Otherwise, it is a treatment wherein medications might still be required by the transplanted kidney.