What is peritoneal Dialysis?

please describe the process to me...

Peritoneal dialysis is a treatment option for kidney failure.
How do you prepare for peritoneal dialysis?
Before you start peritoneal dialysis, a surgeon places a plastic tube (catheter) into your abdomen. Your doctor will probably recommend waiting at least a month before starting treatment to give the area time to heal.
What happens during peritoneal dialysis?
A sterile mixture of sugar and minerals dissolved in water flows through the catheter into your abdomen from a bag attached to a pole or a machine called a cycler. Waste, chemicals and extra fluid are drawn into the solution in your abdominal cavity.
Your doctor will tell you how long the dialysis solution must stay in your abdomen 鈥?often from four to six hours during the day or for about two hours at night if a cycler is doing the exchanges for you while you sleep. This is known as dwell time. Your abdomen may feel fuller than usual while the dialysis solution is in your abdomen, but it's generally not uncomfortable.

When the dwell time is over, you'll reconnect the catheter to a drain line or the machine will drain the fluid from your abdomen for you. The solution 鈥?along with the waste products pulled from your blood through the tiny blood vessels in your peritoneum and any excess fluid 鈥?flow into a sterile collection bag. Then the cycle begins again.
Are there different types of peritoneal dialysis?
Peritoneal dialysis can be done manually throughout the day or with a machine at night. Some people use a combination of both methods.

Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). With CAPD, you fill your abdomen with dialysis solution and drain the fluid by hand. Each time you drain the fluid and replace it with new dialysis solution, it's known as an exchange. Each exchange takes about 30 to 40 minutes. You may need three or four exchanges a day and one in the evening with a longer dwell time while you sleep. You can do the exchanges at home, work or any clean place 鈥?and you're free to do your normal activities while the dialysis solution dwells in your abdomen between exchanges.
Continuous cycling peritoneal dialysis (CCPD). With CCPD, also called automated peritoneal dialysis, a machine automatically infuses dialysis solution into your peritoneal cavity and drains it several times during the night while you sleep. This gives you more flexibility during the day, but you must be attached to the machine for 10 to 12 hours at night. In the morning, you begin one exchange with a dwell time that lasts the entire day. You're not connected to the machine during the day.

A tube is placed through the abdomen directly into the kidney and it flushes it out......... You can look it up on Yahoo Health

In PD, a soft tube called a catheter is used to fill your abdomen with a cleansing liquid called dialysis solution. The walls of your abdominal cavity are lined with a membrane called the peritoneum, which allows waste products and extra fluid to pass from your blood into the dialysis solution. The solution contains a sugar called dextrose that will pull wastes and extra fluid into the abdominal cavity. These wastes and fluid then leave your body when the dialysis solution is drained. The used solution, containing wastes and extra fluid, is then thrown away. The process of draining and filling is called an exchange and takes about 30 to 40 minutes. The period the dialysis solution is in your abdomen is called the dwell time. A typical schedule calls for four exchanges a day, each with a dwell time of 4 to 6 hours. Different types of PD have different schedules of daily exchanges.

See the following for more data

http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/p...

My father did this for 2 yrs until it became infected. Mostly it is hanging and changing bags of fluids on and off all day. Then he went to the hospital 3 times per wk. and did hemo dialysis. Where the blood goes thru a machine. It takes several hours. He did it for 13 yrs total.

It is a dialysis process you perform at home instead of on a machine. The doctors place a shunt in the patient to allow the patient to administer an IV solution that cleans the toxins from their body. This is done maybe two or three times a day. My wife's father was on that for about two years.