Technical Advances in Home Dialysis

Recently, multiple initiatives to produce dedicated and simplified hemodialysis machines for home hemodialysis (HHD) have begun. Most have been designed for short daily hemodialysis 6 times per week. Only 1 machine currently has Food and Drug Administration clearance for HHD, but others are in clinical trial or are soon to be. There has been a trend toward using sorbent technology to allow online regeneration of dialysate to facilitate portability and to reduce machine size and reduce water consumption. Many of the machines are intended to be a stepping stone to a wearable artificial kidney (WAK). A WAK using peritoneal dialysis rather than hemodialysis is also in the development stage.