Medicine Atlas

How Healing Is Practiced
Treatments

Dialysis

Also Known As Renal Replacement Therapy

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Dialysis is a treatment that artificially removes waste products and excess fluid from the blood when the kidneys can no longer do so. The Dutch physician Willem Kolff built the first working artificial kidney machine during the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1943, treating his first successfully recovered patient in 1945; dialysis became widely practicable only with the development of reusable vascular access in the following decades. This atlas describes the history of the treatment and is not medical advice.

Facts
Origin Year
1943 1
Cross-Tradition Connections

Discovered By

Willem Kolff, Healers

Built the first working dialysis machine in 1943.

Treats

Source A History of MedicineLois N. Magner
Sources
1. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity
Roy Porter, W. W. Norton and Company, 1997
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
A History of Medicine
Lois N. Magner, CRC PressTreats: Chronic Kidney Disease
Willem Kolff (Wikipedia)
WikipediaDiscovered By: Willem KolffView the Source
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