Planning, Developing and Operating a Dialysis Programme

Nephrology did not emerge as a major clinical specialty until dialysis and transplantation were introduced. Initially, dialysis was a laborious procedure performed in a few hospitals by doctors with cumbersome equipment and involving considerable risk to the patient who was selected by a rigorous vetting procedure from the many with end-stage renal failure. Today, the word dialysis, is almost a generic term for several different freely available procedures which can be performed by the patients themselves in almost any location. The evolution of dialysis is still continuing and has wrought major changes to the specialty of nephrology whose face has come more and more to resemble that of its magic procedure.