We have said that technology helps a lot in nowadays medical field, but how it helps and works? Technology can help in various ways, here, we will give some examples and briefly describe how they works.
For example, a haemodialysis machine (refer to figure 01) which is used in dialysis. In medicine field, dialysis is used to provide an artificial replacement for kidney failure in which the kidneys have lost their function to maintain the homeostatic balance of body fluids by filtering and secreting metabolites (such as urea) and minerals from the blood and excreting them, along with water, as urine due to renal failure. For those patients who have temporarily or permanently lost their kidney function, dialysis is used with the aid of haemodialysis machine.
The purpose of haemodialysis machine is to cleans and filter the one’s blood to temporarily discharge unwanted and harmful waste such as extra salt and extra water of one’s body. It also helps to control the blood pressure and keep the balance the proper balance of some important chemicals. Therefore, it can be said that haemodialysis machine is actually replace part of the function of one’s kidneys as one’s experience kidney failure.
So, how is a haemodialysis machine actually works? With the aid of a diagram (refer to figure 02), the process of haemodialysis will be briefly described. Dialyzer, is a special filter that used by haemodialysis which functions as an artificial kidney to clean the patient’s blood. During the treatment, there are two small tubes connect to the patient’s two main vessels which are the vein and artery to let the blood to flow through. Patient’s blood travels through the tube into the dialyzer (blue arrow) and the dialyzer will then filters out wastes, extra salt and extra water. After the filtration inside the machine, the cleaned blood will then flows back (red arrow) into patient’s body through the tube. The haemodialysis machine will monitors blood flow and removes wastes from...