The Kidney Disease Program
St. Joseph’s is home to the regional centre for the treatment of kidney disease, providing vital, life-saving services to people from across south central Ontario. More than 60,000 hemodialysis treatments and approximately 80 kidney transplants were preformed at St. Joe’s last year.
The Challenge
While we are proud of the service we provide to the community, the kidney dialysis services in Hamilton are nearing a saturation point. St. Joseph’s is the only Hamilton hospital that provides dialysis and the number of patients requiring treatment is increasing by 15% a year. Right now this number represents more than 50 new patients each year. Currently 475 patients are being dialyzed in the main centre and another 125 are receiving treatment in the satellite centre, which was approved by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Currently there is a proposal before the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to approve a second satellite centre. The demands on this hospital to provide for the continued growth are enormous.
One method of managing the growth is to increase access to transplantation for patients whose kidneys are failing them. While dialysis is a safe bridge, transplantation is the unequivocal way to go in young patients and otherwise healthy older patients whose kidneys are failing. Great strides have been made in surgical techniques for transplant procedures and recently St. Joseph’s introduced “keyhole surgery” for live donors. “Keyhole” or minimal access surgery, has shorter recovery times for the donor and the life of the kidney is significantly extended. This is exciting because donors experience less discomfort and the risk, in terms of acting as a donor, has been greatly reduced. It is hoped that this advancement will help increase the incidence of live donors and consequentlydonor and the life of the kidney is significantly extended. This is exciting because donors experience less discomfort and the risk, in terms of acting as a donor, has been greatly reduced. It is hoped that this advancement will help increase the incidence of live donors and consequentl the number of transplants taking place.
With progress and research comes cost. To meet this rising demand, the Kidney Program area will be redeveloped to enlarge the space for clinics and labs, in addition to its recruitment of the brightest and the best academic clinicians.
If you would like to know more about about the Kidney Disease Program or would like to make a gift, please click here.