New Peritoneal Dialysis Unit Opens at Church Site

We’re celebrating the opening of our new Peritoneal Dialysis Unit! The PD Unit allows our team of doctors, nurses, and allied professionals to care for >90 home dialysis patients. Patients have a better quality of life and health outcomes with this treatment vs standard dialysis.

Living Donor Transplant Education

Nephrology Program welcomed University Health Network’s Heather Lanning, Transplant Program Living Donation Outreach Coordinator, as she supports our program and initiatives of staff providing living donor transplant education to patients and families.

Humber River Health’s Dialysis Innovation

This success story, like many others, started with a problem. Thirty years ago, a team of Toronto nephrologists led by Dr. Uldall and Dr. Pierratos realized the tremendous burden hemodialysis had on patients and families. To improve the quality of life and outcomes for dialysis patients, the group came up with the radical idea of independent home dialysis. Over the years, Dr. Pierratos advanced the treatment for ESRD patients by demonstrating the safety and efficacy of home nocturnal dialysis.

Fast forward 15 years and the team identified another problem: Home hemodialysis was not accessible to all patients. As such, Dr. Pierratos and the Home Dialysis Team came up with an innovative solution: Assisted Home Hemodialysis.

The idea of Personal Support Workers (PSW) assisting dialysis patients at home was nothing short of radical and only actualized through the work and dedication of an incredible Home Dialysis Nursing Team. The PSW program was so successful, that the Ontario Renal Network expanded the initiative to all regional renal centres in 2015.

Fast forward one more time to October 2019. Mr. Yasmineh, a 94-year old patient with ESRD, commences hemodialysis in the Transition Care Unit (TCU). The challenge of coming back and forth for dialysis is difficult for any patient, let alone for a wheelchair-bound elderly man. Despite the obvious challenges, Mr. Yasmineh’s only worry was leaving his 90-year old wife with dementia alone while he was attending dialysis. Time for yet another radical Humber idea: Assisted dialysis in retirement and long-term care homes.

It didn’t take long for the TCU and Home Dialysis teams to cut through the red tap turning this bold idea into reality. As of Monday, January 17, Mr. Yasmineh is the first patient to receive assisted hemodialysis in his retirement residence.

We are incredibly proud to be working at Humber, alongside a team of dedicated clinicians and staff who are relentless in their pursuit of excellent patient care and will continue innovating and pushing the boundaries with the goal of advancing renal care at Humber.

View CTV News Toronto’s story on our dialysis innovation here!