History
Dr. Willem Kolff, a Dutch physician, constructed the first working dialyzer in 1943 during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Due to the scarcity of available resources, Kolff had to improvise and build the initial machine using sausage casings, beverage cans, a washing machine, and various other items that were available at the time. Over the following two years, Kolff used his machine to treat 16 patients suffering from acute kidney failure, but the results were unsuccessful. Then, in 1945, a 67-year-old comatose woman regained consciousness following 11 hours of hemodialysis with the dialyzer, and lived for another seven years before dying of an unrelated condition. She was the first-ever patient successfully treated with dialysis.
Read more about this topic: Dialysis
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