Dialysis Access Specialist

Dialysis Access services offered in Sarasota, FL

Kidney failure is fatal without dialysis, but the treatment is demanding and time-consuming. To make life easier and reduce your risk of infection, the team of board-certified vascular surgeons at Sarasota Vascular Specialists offers dialysis access surgery. The procedure creates an access point in your arm’s blood vessels to simplify hemodialysis. To find out how you can benefit from the team’s expertise in dialysis access surgery, call the office in Sarasota, Florida, or book an appointment online today.

Dialysis Access Q & A

Why might I need dialysis?

Dialysis delivers life-saving treatment to patients with severe kidney disease.

Your kidneys extract waste from your body and regulate the water content and levels of certain chemicals in your blood. If you suffer kidney failure, your kidneys no longer correctly perform these functions.

Kidney failure is irreversible. The only cure is a kidney transplant. While you’re waiting for a new kidney, you need to regularly undergo dialysis to survive. Dialysis does the work of your kidneys. It cleans the wastes and toxins from your blood.

Dialysis is also vital for people who can’t have a transplant. And you might still need dialysis for a while after you have transplant surgery.

What is dialysis access?

There are two ways of accessing your body to perform dialysis:

Peritoneal dialysis

Peritoneal dialysis involves surgically placing a small tube in the lower abdomen. Dialysis fluids go into the abdomen and stay there for several hours. Draining the dialysis fluid removes the chemical waste your body produces.

Hemodialysis

With hemodialysis, blood comes out of your body through one needle, goes through a cleansing process in the dialysis machine, then goes back into your body through a second needle. You might have a catheter or dialysis access in your arm or leg.

What does dialysis access surgery involve?

Dialysis access surgery involves creating access points to your blood vessels to enable hemodialysis to take place. This is a better approach than making repeated needle punctures, which will damage veins and arteries.

The Sarasota Vascular Specialists team creates an access point in either your left or right arm – whichever one you use least. They might then create an arteriovenous (AV) fistula using your blood vessels to make a connection between an artery and a vein.

An alternative is an AV graft, where your surgeon uses an artificial material to connect the vein and artery. They make two small incisions and create a tunnel under your skin to aid in the graft’s placement. Your surgeon attaches one end of the AV graft to the artery and the other to the vein.

In both dialysis access procedures, blood flowing from an artery into the vein increases blood pressure and enlarges the vein. This allows blood to go through the dialysis machine at the correct flow rate for filtering and cleaning.

How long do dialysis access points stay open?

AV grafts stay open for about a year; fistulas can remain open longer. Blockages sometimes happen when scar tissue develops that slows blood flow and a clot forms. Your doctor at Sarasota Vascular Specialists can remove any clotting from the graft using catheters and wires.

When you no longer need your dialysis access, your surgeon can remove it to restore normal blood flow.

Call Sarasota Vascular Specialists today or book an appointment online to learn more.