Like most organs the kidney is quite necessary for survival. You do have two of them but the body really does better with both of them. Occasionally some who has both kidneys fail receives a donated kidney from a relative or some nice person who filled their organ donor card out.
Kidney failure can be the result of many things and since you need at least one kidney to survive any kidney problem can result in a kidney transplant. Of course something that effects just one kidney would not require a kidney transplant, or you’d forever be on the bottom of an ever growing kidney transplant list.
If your kidneys were to fail for some reason (acute renal failure), dialysis can be used to get that kidney working again, but this procedure must be undergone very often as the kidney will not begin working again. Dialysis simply does the job for the kidneys.
So that begs the question, just what does the kidney do? They are part of the urinary system, and they generally filter waste from the blood and dumps it into the urinary system. The kidney helps us pee out the bad stuff in our blood. Specifically it regulates the pH, mineral ion concentration, and water composition of the blood. You urine is acidic as a result. Without a kidney our blood pH levels would become lethal in a fairly short amount of time. Even having only one kidney is tough to live with, the acid levels will be higher than they should be, leading to gout among other problems.
