Much of these problems with artificial organs revolve around the power supply. An artificial heart is pretty easy with modern technology compared to how to power it. Same for most organs.

Dialysis also requires expensive medicine, like e.g. EPO, which contributes to a non negligeable part of the cost. The 77000 $ / patient surprised me a little because the figures I have heard in France (family members involved in dialysis treatment)are actually higher, not lower.

Well, the heart, lungs and to some extent kidneys are pretty simple to emulate, but the full suite of chemical functions performed by, say, the liver are actually pretty tough. That said, the power concerns are indeed another serious obstacle.

As much as this seems like a solution, its distant science fiction for now.

The kidney is not a simple organ and once you start implanting foreign material into people you run into some major issues. Clotting and infection for example. In comarison, artificial heart (a mechanical pump) seems a simpler task and I don't remember hearing much on widespread applications of that lately.

How distant would you personally estimate? Close enough that it's worthwhile to pump some funds into it so it's achievable in, say, a decade or two?

There are multiple implantable artificial hearts in use right now. They're really only good in cases of near total heart failure, and generally only work to extend life by ~year at most (for now). Crank High Voltage has one of these as a plot device.

Did anyone actually watch that movie?

Yep ! Totally crazy movie with Jason Statham. If you can recommand similar movies I'm listening! (already saw the sequel BTW)

High Voltage IS the sequel; or is there a third one out that I haven't heard of yet?

oops. you're right

They have a rediculouls hard time just maintaining access to the patients' blood supply. A machine that can do the filtering is actually the easy part. Getting fluids in and out of the body continuously and on a long term basis is actualy a very difficult problem.

As a Brit, I'm fascinated by the lack of discussion of CAPD here -- that's Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ambulatory_peritonea... ). Back in the late eighties when I was working in clinical pharmacy practice, it was the big new thing -- cheaper than haemodialysis (CAPD fluid is dirt cheap, so cheap that hospitals had to brew it up themselves in their pharmaceutical manufacturing units because no commercial supplier could be arsed selling the stuff), more convenient for the patient (they could walk around while on CAPD, rather than being stuck in a chair), somewhat lower risk of infection when it was done right, no need for an expensive perfusion machine with blood filters, and so on. It's still used extensively in the NHS, and in some other countries -- but seems to be unheard-of in the USA.

I wouldn’t say it’s unheard-of; perhaps my mom is an outlier, but she’s been doing Automated Peritoneal Dialysis for about 3.5 years.