Hemodialysing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of removing waste, excess fluids, and toxins from the blood by circulating it through a machine that functions as an artificial kidney; performing this medical treatment to cleanse blood in cases of kidney failure; using a mechanical device to filter blood outside the body as part of renal replacement therapy
2. A medical procedure involving the passage of blood through a dialyzer to eliminate impurities caused by kidney malfunction; executing this artificial purification method to maintain chemical balance when kidneys are compromised; filtering blood externally via a specialized machine to support patients with renal insufficiency
3. The act of cleansing blood by diverting it through a dialysis apparatus to remove harmful substances normally filtered by healthy kidneys; conducting this extracorporeal blood treatment to manage renal failure symptoms; employing a mechanical filtration system to substitute natural kidney functions in blood purification

Etymology: The word is the present participle and gerund of "hemodialyse," a verb built from two parts: "hemo-," from Greek "haima," meaning blood, and "dialyse," the British spelling of "dialyze," which is itself from Greek "dialysis," meaning separation or dissolution, a term Thomas Graham borrowed in the 1860s to describe how dissolved substances pass through a membrane. Taken together, the combination describes the process of filtering blood through a membrane to remove waste, a technique that became medically practical only in the twentieth century. The compound is a plain technical coinage rather than a historic word with a folk tale behind it. Its meaning is fixed by its parts: the first half names the substance, the second names the separating process. Because "dialysis" was a scientific term for a laboratory technique, "hemodialysis" arrived as a medical description of an artificial kidney procedure, and the verb form follows naturally from the noun.

Synonyms: dialyzing, filtering blood