If your kidneys are failing and you have not yet found a matching donor, dialysis is the most important part of your weekly routine. Although it is time consuming, expensive, and simply annoying, it can keep a kidney failure patient alive for years. Every year 400,000 U.S citizens undergo dialysis treatments. Now, new studies suggest that longer and more frequent dialysis treatments may provide more benefits for patients. These studies will be published in the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN).

How frequent you wonder? Well, these studies suggest that daily or nightly treatment sessions at home are viable treatment options for those suffering from kidney failure. Today, most patients receive dialysis treatments at outpatient facilities about three times a week for three to four hours. That sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Waking up in the morning three times a week to be in a hospital or clinic bed for three or four hours is difficult. And not just for the patient, but for their whole family. So, doing this daily sounds like a nightmare, right? I understand and so do the doctors. This is why the experts have recommended nighttime dialysis. Thus, while you sleep, the dialysis machine can clean your body of toxins and you do not have to waste four hours of your day, every day.

Pretty much every ethnic group in the United States was the subject of racism or ethnocentrism at one point in history. Native Americans were robbed of their land; African Americans were condemned to a life of slavery; citizens of Asian origin were rounded up during the red scare; the Irish and Italians were discriminated against; and let us not forget what citizens from Latin American origins go through today. However, most people assume nowadays that racism is going away. When I was in college I used to hear how blacks are not really discriminated against anymore. Now the focus is on Latin Americans and those who follow the Muslim religion. As I expected, that is not true, not at all. Racism is all around us poisoning our life and sometimes helping kill innocents.

A new study of more than 2,200 patients treated at the Emory Transplant Center showed that black patients with ESRD (End Stage Renal Disease) had a 59% lower rate of kidney transplant than whites at this southeastern center. How bad is this? Extremely bad, especially since African Americans suffer from End Stage Renal Disease disproportionately compared to other races. For example, the incidence of kidney failure in blacks is 998 per million, while in whites it is 273 per million. African Americans constitute only about 15% of the total U.S population; however, they constitute about 30% of kidney failure cases. Not only this, but African Americans also develop kidney disease at an earlier age than Caucasian, 56 years old for blacks compared to 66 for whites. So, since African Americans seem to be more prone to kidney failure, one would think that transplant rates would be proportionate to the number of cases. Yet, in the case of Emory Transplant Center, black patients have a 59% lower rate of transplant. How does this make sense? Don’t all people have the right to life? Shouldn’t all people be treated equally when it comes to life saving treatments?!