BY HEINER FRUEHAUF

Chronic renal failure marks the most severe of the potential end stages of chronic kidney infection and other systemic diseases involving the kidneys, such as diabetes. Patients with renal failure essentially suffer a near complete collapse of kidney function and become internally poisoned by nitrogenous compounds as a result. If kidney function is not restored, which in chronic cases is virtually impossible with modern medical treatments, or if the body's toxic load cannot be expelled by other means, this condition is severe and usually quickly leads to death. Since the advent of the modern medical procedures of kidney dialysis and kidney transplants, chronic renal failure has lost much of the immediacy of its life threatening quality. For most dialysis and transplant patients, however, the quality of life remains low.