Rick, Meet Dr. Kolff

Photo: Dr. Willem Kolff, center, with two colleagues and an early dialysis machine

Last October my husband, Rick, was diagnosed with “end stage renal disease.” That diagnosis is every bit as serious as it sounds.
There are levels of renal (kidney) failure. There is “acute renal failure,” in which your kidneys may recover enough function to carry on. Rick had that in 1997, which left him with partial kidney function for 13 years.
“End stage renal disease” means that your kidneys are done. Period. When Rick was diagnosed, what had been our normal life came to a halt, and we began living a “new normal.”
You learn a lot when the earth moves under your feet in a bad way. One of the first things you learn is how gracious and generous people can be when they see a need, and people have supported us in every way since last October. There has been so much kindness, there have been so many prayers, and people forwarded money that helped us pay the bills. It is a cliché to say that if I tried to thank everybody by name, I would no doubt leave someone out, which would be a pity. Like most cliches this is true, so I will simply say: Thank you. You saved us. Yes, you. Please take our gratitude to heart.
Last October 5, when Rick received this diagnosis, we had no idea what was going to happen to him, and where it was leading. Where it led was to home dialysis. I could do a lecture on dialysis. In fact, I think I will.
There are two kinds of dialysis: hemodialysis, and peritoneal dialysis. Hemodialysis is the cleansing and filtering of blood. The idea was around for centuries, but the process as we know it was pioneered by Dr. Wilhelm Kolff in Holland during World War II.
Kolff was born on February 14, 1911, in Leiden, Netherlands. He became an MD in 1938, and one of his early cases was a 22-year-old man who died of renal failure. Dr. Kolff thought there ought to be a way to save such patients, and he put his considerable mind to the task. In his research he found an article by John Abel, a pharmacologist from John Hopkins University, who wrote in 1913 about experiments with dialysis in animals.
After the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940, Kolff persisted in figuring out hemodialysis despite the Nazi occupation. He and his family, friends, and colleagues risked their lives to invent a dialysis machine using what materials they had at hand, including cellophane sausage casings, a cooling system from an old Ford, parts from a crashed German fighter plane, and washing machine tubs. Kolff's original idea was to give compromised kidneys a break so they could rest and resume functioning, then dialysis would be discontinued.
The first dialysis machine was completed early in the war, but the first successful treatment of a renal patient by hemodialysis was not until 1945. This patient was a woman in a renal coma. She had been a Nazi collaborator, hated by the people in the town where Kolff lived. He believed he was a doctor, not a judge, and treated her. She awoke from her coma, said, “I am going to divorce my husband,” and lived another six years.
After that it was a process of refining and improving hemodialysis machines. He sent five of his hemodialysis machines to countries around the world, including the United States. The machines evolved from helping people in acute renal failure through a crisis into also keeping people with end stage renal disease alive.
In 1950 Dr. Kolff immigrated to the United States, and in 1956 he became an American citizen. In 1957 he went to the University of Utah and started a Division of Artificial Organs and spent the rest of his life researching and developing artificial organs, including the artificial heart. Robert Jarvik, one of Kolff's graduate students, was the project manager for the development of an artificial heart, and the Jarvik 7 heart currently is used in terminal cardiac patients as a bridge to heart transplantation.
Dr. Willem Kolff died last year, February 11, 2009, four days before his 98th birthday. All hemodialysis patients alive today, including my husband Rick, and patients with many other terminal conditions owe their continued existence to Dr. Kolff and his insatiable drive to invent and improve machines that saved lives.
Dialysis machines gradually were refined and improved, but one of the main problems – how do you get a person's blood out, cleansed, and then back into the person's body? - remained a challenge. This brings us to University of Washington professor Dr. Belding Scribner.


Next time: Dr. Belding Scribner, the fistula, and modern hemodialysis