Urea clearance monitoring during dialysis using an optical bridge method: feasibility studies

Abstract

Dialysis is a medical procedure that has account for the actual progress of the dialysis session, and ondramatically improved the health of millions of kidney line adjustments are not made during the course of treatment. disease patients over the last 50 years. There has been much Many studies have been done that demonstrate how damaging debate in recent years concerning how physicians can best inadequate dialysis therapy can be to patients, and how control the amount of dialysis given to a patient. Several modeling the progress of the dialysis session can improve the models exist that can quantify the amount of uremic toxin long term prognosis of the patient [I-81. Despite this evidence, removed from the patient over the course of a dialysis very few clinical centers perform routine urea clearance session. These models are not widely used because they are monitoring. This may be because many models are difficult to complicated to apply, and difiicult to understand and understand and require extra staff time to implement. implement. A real time, automated system that canOur research explores the feasibility of using an optical determine the amount of dialysis required for a given approach to evaluate the effectiveness of dialysis by monitoring patient would offer an improved alternative to the typical e. The quantity of calculated dialysis prescription.A possibility to urea in the spent dialysate stream ed to the amount of continuously measure and monitor one o r several dialysis ure of the degree of parameters over the course of the session would provide a on. This provides a much more qualitative and quantitative measure of the as removed toxins dialysis progress. An 'Optical Bridge' technique that * from the patient's bloodstream. measures urea concentration in spent dialysate has been proposed as a method of obtaining information about the groups and an oxygen atom attached with a double bond. It has progress of a dialysis session. Preliminary feasibility studies a molecular weight of 60, and is soluble in water and toxic only have shown promising results, and have elucidated the at high levels. Urea is the chief nitrogenous waste product of major problems to be solved.protein catabolism that results from the removal of the a-amino groups to detoxify NH3.