artificial kidney

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English

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Noun

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artificial kidney (plural artificial kidneys)

  1. A dialysis machine, an external device that cleans the blood of people with kidney failure; from the 1940s to the 2000s, not portable, but wearable versions now exist.
    • 2013 June 1, “A better waterworks”, in The Economist[1], volume 407, number 8838, page 5 (Technology Quarterly):
      An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic the way real kidneys cleanse blood and eject impurities and surplus water as urine.
  2. An implantable bionic device to replace the function of a natural kidney, long dreamed of but not yet feasible.
  3. A bioengineered (laboratory-grown) biologic kidney (from cultured cells), still experimental.
    Synonym: kidney machine

Coordinate terms

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