Advanced Treatments for Cats with Kidney Disease

I'm sure you care deeply about your cat and want to do everything you can to make her comfortable and extend her life. Hopefully, you'll find a lot of answers on this site and elsewhere.

However, at some point, every pet owner has to decide just how he or she wants to go to care for a cat with kidney disease. It's going to be a different decision for everyone, depending on resources.

We were prepared to do everything possible – diet, fluid treatments, extra care, probiotics, hand-feeding and more – but short of what we considered "heroic" efforts. By that I mean treatments normally used for humans – kidney dialysis and kidney transplants.

Believe it or not, both are now available for the treatment of feline chronic kidney failure. Here's a snapshot of both.

Dialysis

As you may know, with kidney dialysis, a catheter is inserted into a vein and the blood is circulated through an artificial, mechanical "kidney" machine. This machine filters out toxins and waste products from the blood. Blood is circulated several times during the course of one treatment. These treatments can last from three to five hours.

Very few veterinary facilities are equipped to offer hemodialysis for cats. However, if you are interested in more information about this, visit the Feline CRF site for a list of facilities that do offer feline dialysis.

Kidney Transplants

Admittedly, this would seem like a very extreme measure to go to save your cat's life. However...

Kidney transplants in animals apparently date back many years. In the mid-1980s, the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, pioneered a kidney transplant program in animals. Transplants are now available in other areas of the country and the procedure and post-operative protocol have reached the point where kidney transplants for cats is no longer considered experimental.

Kidney transplants are most often performed on older cats, with the goal of extending life expectancy anywhere from 2 to 6 years. To date, according to the Feline CRF Information site, a cat has survived for as long as 10 years after the operation. They even say "feline renal transplantation is now an accepted and relatively safe treatment for patients in renal failure" and note the success rate is nearly 90 percent. For more details on the history and actual process of kidney transplantation in cats, visit the CRF Info Page.

If you or any of your friends know of the costs associated with this procedure, please let us know as a service to other readers of this blog. You can add your comments below. Thanks.