HEMODIALYSIS TECHNIQUES

Processes involved in latest hemodialysis techniques - Literature Review

[Name of the Institute]

Processes involved in latest hemodialysis techniques

The main job of kidneys is to clean the blood and remove harmful toxins, however when the kidney function drops below 10% to 15%, they are unable to perform blood filtration successfully. To remedy this, the blood is filtered artificially using mechanical means and this process is called dialysis. In a hemodialysis process the patient's blood is routed through a machine (which acts as an artificial kidney) where it passes through a man-made membrane for filtration (called the dialyzer) and comes in contact with a special solution called dialysate. The dialyzer is made of numerous fibers that act as a semipermeable membrane, hence a filter. The blood moves down on the inside of the membrane whereas the dialysate solution moves on the outside in the upward direction. This motion results in the filtration of blood and the toxins move from blood to the solution across the membrane. This is called the diffusion process andin this, the solutes movement occurs across the dialyzer. Diffusion occurs depending on several factors such as the solute's concentration gradient, its molecular weight and its velocity size.The cleansed blood is then returned back to the patient's body. The physical processes of hemodialysis involve several points that are being given special attention by the researchers and the state of the art techniques are being employed or its improvement.

Blood trauma is one of the challenges in all mechanical machine related therapies including hemodialysis (Grigioni et al. 2004). The mechanical parts of a machine such as tubing and throttles can cause severe damage to erythrocytes and platelets. Particularly the dialysis process has to face different challenges which include rapid change in blood pressure, fluid overload, and amyloidosis, loss of independence, bleeding, needles, and infections. The mechanical parts of the machine can harm the body and also result in causing infections. Dialysis is a forever decision, and while the patients are on dialysis they may experience other problems as well which are mentioned above.

One of important issues in hemodialysis process is the efficiency of the dialyzer. In a recent research done by Santoro and Guadagni (2010), membrane characteristics and transport phenomena in relation to the dialysis process is studied in detail. They state that the new high flux dialyzers have better biocompatibility and perform efficiently.

Vascular access stenosis is another main issue dialysis process and it affects the cost of medical care as well as patient mortality.Recent studies show that in a hemodialysis process, the endovascular stunts can be used for the treatment of stenotic lesions; both peripheral as well as central (Alexander Yevzlin and ArifAsif, 2009). This study also discusses the recent advances on issues for instance annulation process with stent and stent infection, fracture and migration.

There has been lot of progress related to the hemodialysis implementation and newer state of the art techniques are being devised by researchers. One of the most efficient and preferred therapy techniques that exist ...