If someone is admitted to hosp. and progresses to end stage renal failure, can they still recover from it?

Question

(If they admission was due to acute renal failure...and recover i.e. not need haemodialysis anymore)

Answer 1

ESRD is by definition chronic kidney disease.  We wouldn't call it ESRD if it was due to an acute cause.  It is not considered to be reversible (except by transplant) because it is caused by accumulated damage over a long period.  People with chronic kidney disease are staged by the severity of their disease, based on something called the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), and generally don't need dialysis until they progress to the later stages.

Acute renal failure can be reversible, depending on the cause, and whether or not they require any kind of dialysis depends on how quickly the cause of the ARF can be determined and reversed, or recovered from.  Your question could encompass a really wide range of diseases and damage.  Some people with ARF do progress to ESRD and require dialysis.  

I'm not knowledgeable enough to differentiate between the uses of or indications for peritoneal dialysis versus hemodialysis but I think the latter would always be used in an acute situation, if only because the access route is simpler and I believe it's more efficient.  I think peritoneal dialysis is mostly used at home so people can avoid having to go to a dialysis center several times a week, but it may have other advantages as well.

Answer 2

I know one guy who has one kidney missing and the other severely damaged. He also has other medical problems, and if somebody accidentally gives him so much as an Advil, he has to go back on dialysis. He's done it several times.