Dialysis didn’t kill them: What we get dangerously wrong about renal disease
Kidney failure does not wait. It progresses quietly — until it doesn’t.
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Kidney failure does not wait. It progresses quietly — until it doesn’t.
DIALYSIS is not a cure. It was never meant to be. It is support — a way of doing, imperfectly and intermittently, what the kidneys once did effortlessly.
PHOTOGRAPH courtesy of Olga Kononenko/Unsplash
DIALYSIS does not kill patients. Kidney failure does.
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“Doc, ayoko mag-dialysis… kasi pag nag-dialysis, namamatay (Doc, I don’t want to undergo dialysis… because those who did, died).”
I have heard that line more times than I can count. In the clinic. In the ward. In the ICU. In quiet conversations where fear speaks louder than facts. And to be fair, I understand where it comes from. People have seen it happen. A father starts dialysis, then dies months later. A neighbor begins treatment, then slowly fades. A relative undergoes dialysis, and in the way stories are told and retold, that moment becomes the beginning of the end. The sequence is real. The grief is real. But the conclusion — that dialysis is what killed them — is deeply, dangerously wrong.
Dialysis does not kill patients. Kidney failure does. By the time someone needs dialysis, the disease has usually been there for years, sometimes decades, quietly doing its damage long before anyone pays attention. Diabetes that was “controlled” until it wasn’t. Hypertension that felt harmless because it caused no pain. Missed follow-ups. Medications stopped too early. A system that reacts late. A mindset that waits longer. By the time dialysis enters the picture, the kidneys are already failing — and often, the rest of the body is not far behind. Dialysis does not start the illness. It enters when we are already losing the fight.
But people are wired to misunderstand cause and effect. We remember what comes last, and we blame it. A patient goes to the hospital and dies — so the hospital must have caused it. Someone opens an umbrella and then it rains – so the umbrella becomes part of the story.
Dialysis suffers from the same flawed logic. It is visible. It is dramatic. It marks a turning point. It is easy to point to a machine and say, “That was it.” What is harder to see is everything that came before it — the years of silent damage, the missed chances, the slow, quiet progression of disease that brought the patient there in the first place.
I remember one patient — not because his story was unique, but because it happens far too often. Let’s call him Mang Tony. He was referred late. Very late. His creatinine was already in the double digits. His lungs were filled with fluid. His potassium was high enough to stop the heart without warning. He could not lie flat. He could barely breathe. We explained everything — clearly, honestly. What dialysis could do. What it could not. What would happen if we did nothing. He listened. His family listened. Then came the hesitation. “Doc, baka pag nag-dialysis ako… doon na ako tuluyang mawala.” His family nodded. They had heard the same stories. So they waited. A few days. Then longer. By the time they agreed, he was already in the ICU (intensive care unit) — more unstable, more fragile, more difficult to save. We started dialysis. It helped, but only briefly. The disease had gone too far. And when he died, the explanation came quickly, almost automatically: “Nag-dialysis kasi.”
No. He died because we reached that point too late.
That is the uncomfortable truth. Dialysis is often blamed for failures that began long before the first treatment. It becomes the villain because it is visible, because it is easy to understand, because it is easier to blame a machine than to confront years of delay, denial and missed opportunity. But dialysis did not create the problem. It was introduced when the problem was already advanced. It did not light the fire. It arrived when the house was already burning.
Dialysis is not a cure. It was never meant to be. It is support — a way of doing, imperfectly and intermittently, what the kidneys once did effortlessly. It removes toxins. It removes fluid. It stabilizes electrolytes that can kill within minutes if left unchecked. Without dialysis, many of these patients would not survive days. With it, they are given time. Not perfect time. Not unlimited time. But time. Time to go home. Time to sit at the table again. Time to see children grow. Time, for some, to receive a transplant and begin again. When we say, “Namatay kahit na-dialysis,” what we often fail to say is this: without dialysis, that death would have come much sooner.
Of course, dialysis is hard. It changes lives. It imposes limits. It demands discipline. It carries costs — financial, physical, emotional. Anyone who has lived through it knows that. But there is a difference between something being difficult and something being the cause of death. Those are not the same. When we confuse the two, fear takes over. Decisions are delayed. And by the time treatment is finally accepted, the window for meaningful recovery may already be closing.
So the better question is not, “Why did they die after dialysis?” The better question is, “How long had the disease been there before dialysis was even considered?” How many years were lost to silence? How many chances were missed because nothing felt urgent — until suddenly, everything was?
As doctors, we need to explain this better. Clearly. Repeatedly. In language that people understand. And as patients, we need to engage earlier, ask more questions, and stop equating absence of symptoms with absence of disease. Because kidney failure does not wait. It progresses quietly — until it doesn’t.
Maybe it’s time we change the line we keep repeating. Not “pag nag-dialysis, mamamatay.” But “pag hindi nag-dialysis… ano ang mangyayari?”
Because dialysis was never the cause.
It was the chance.
And too often…
It is the chance we wait too long to take.
