How Long can Chronic Renal Failure Patients Live on Dialysis

Q: My grandmother is 72 years old and she has Diabetes and congestive heart failure besides Chronic Renal Failure. Now, her doctor asked her to start dialysis. Can you tell me her expected life span after dialysis?
A: I am sorry to hear that. Based on her illness conditions, if she starts dialysis today, on average, she would live 3~5 years. Some researches show that the average life span of patients is less than five years on dialysis. Diabetes raises that mortality rate about 3% for a total of 25%. Among all death causes of Chronic Renal Failure, heart failure is in the first place.
In Chronic Renal Failure, the kidneys can not filter out the potassium. If the potassium level is too high in blood, it will cause the heart to beat irregularly.
In addition, her kidneys are not able to discharge excess fluid from body. As a result, the vascular system will become flooded with fluid and the heart will not be able to keep up with the increased blood volume. Meanwhile, the fluid will flow into lung, which can make it difficult to breathe thus causing ischemia in other organs such as brain and heart.
If the above factors are combined together, there is little chance that she will survive long without dialysis.
However, you should know dialysis can change her life lot. She may have to encounter frequent infections, head ache, fluctuant blood pressure etc which usually occur during dialysis.
So, if possible, I hope she can take an alternative treatment. In China, Immunotherapy has been applied to treat Chronic Renal Failure successfully. It can restore the impaired kidneys so as to improve the renal function. For the patients who have stared dialysis recently, it may help them prolong the dialysis intervals and even get rid of it.
If you are interested in Immunotherapy and want to know more abut it, it is free for you to leave a message in the below.