By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

For the past seven years, Barbara Carter had to drive three times a week from her Mount Pleasant home to Renal Advantage Inc. in West Ashley for her 6 a.m. kidney dialysis treatment.

The trips and the treatments were a strain for the 66-year-old Carter, who has one functioning kidney. They left her tired and interfered with her family life. Because she did not return home from the clinic until 9:30 or 10 a.m., her children could not stop by her house first thing in the morning and drop off Carter’s three young grandchildren, whom she enjoyed babysitting.

That scenario changed last November, when Renal Advantage provided Carter with a portable dialysis machine she could use at home.

Produced by Lawrence, Mass.-based medical device company NxStage Medical Inc., the machine, called the NxStage System One, made its South Carolina debut last July at Renal Advantage, said Amanda Beaver, program director for Renal Advantage care centers in the Southeast.

Based in Brentwood, Tenn., Renal Advantage has four locations in South Carolina, all of them in the tri-county area. Aside from West Ashley, the clinic has facilities in North Charleston, Moncks Corner and Summerville.

Renal Advantage serves a total of about 400 patients in the Lowcountry, Beaver said.

Carter considers the 75-pound NxStage System One a blessing. Roughly the size of a 13-inch television, the machine sits on a stand near Carter’s kitchen. Plastic bags containing special blood- and body-cleaning fluids are attached to the machine.

Carter, who was trained by a Renal Advantage nurse to use the machine, sticks a tube in her arm, the fluids stream through the tube and remove impurities from her blood and excess fluids built up in her body before the waste is discharged through a line connected to Carter’s kitchen sink drain. The machine records the results of each treatment.

Every six weeks Carter goes to Renal Advantage to have her dialysis results checked.

Carter is one of seven Renal Advantage patients using NxStage System One. So far, four more patients are on a waiting list for the machine. Patients must be evaluated by a doctor to become candidates for the machine. Top candidates are those who have a partner at home to assist them with the machine and those who are trained to stick themselves with a tube or have a partner trained to do this. The cost of the machine is covered by the patients’ insurance, Beaver added.

The machine’s convenience and portability—patients can put it in a car and take it with them on trips—helps improve quality of life for kidney patients, Beaver said.

“The machine fits into their lifestyles,” she said.

NxStage System One contributes to the growing trend of home therapy, which enables nurses to devote more time to those patients who need treatment at clinics, Beaver said.

It also helps employees with kidney problems to take less time off from work and even stay in the work force, Beaver noted.

Twenty million Americans—one in nine U.S. adults—suffer from chronic kidney disease, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

Dennis Quick covers health and wellness for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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