W ITH THE INTRODUCTION of intensive care units in the 1960s an environment was established for aggressive patient care. Current technologic achievements continue to improve the means by which this care is provided. Hemodialysis, ventilators, parenteral nutrition, and ventricular assist devices all offer temporary, or occasionally permanent, support for failing organ systems. Extracorporeal circ...

Involvement of the kinin system was studied in 58 patients during extracorporeal circulation in open heart surgery. At the onset of extracorporeal circulation, there was no increase of free kinin in blood and no reduction of plasma kininogen, when the latter was expressed as mug bradykinin/mg plasma protein. With the lapse of time, kinin in the blood increased significantly, and decrease of kin...

Involvement of the kinin system was studied in 58 patients during extracorporeal circulation in openheart surgery. At the onset of extracorporeal circulation, there was no increase of free kinin in blood and no reduction of plasma kininogen, when the latter was expressed as gg bradykinin/mg plasma protein. With the lapse of time. kinin in the blood increased significantly, and decrease of kinin...

Abstract Renal Replacement Therapies generally associated to the Artificial Kidney (AK) are membrane-based treatments that assure separation functions of failing kidney in extracorporeal blood circulation. Their progress from conventional hemodialysis towards high-flux (HFHD) through introduction ultrafiltration membranes characterized by high convective permeation fluxes intensified need eluci...

Dialysis-related amyloidosis (DRA) is a common complication associated with long-term haemodialysis therapy. The elimination of beta2-microglobulin (beta2m), the major constituent of the amyloid fibrils in DRA, from circulation has been expected to bring some clinical benefit. Recently, a direct haemoperfusion method using selective beta2m absorption column to eliminate circulating beta2m has b...

BACKGROUND Recirculation (R) and access blood flow (Qac) measurements are considered useful indicators of adequate delivery of haemodialysis. It was the purpose of this study to compare measurements of R and Qac obtained by two different techniques which are based on the same principle of indicator dilution, but which differ because of the characteristics of the injection and detection of the d...