The Economist: Dialysis is an unpleasant process that involves being hooked up to a huge machine—often at a hospital—at least three times a week, in order to have your blood cleansed of waste that would normally be voided, via the kidneys, as urine.
Victor Gura, of the University of California, Los Angeles, hopes to make this process more pleasant with an invention that is now undergoing clinical trials. By going back to basics, he has come up with a completely new sort of dialyser—one you can wear.
At the heart of the machine is a lightweight pump. The pump drives blood from a patient through a hollow fiber filter as well as water containing some minerals. The water is constantly purified by circulating through chemicals that capture the blood's impurities. The blood is then pumped back to the patient. The filter needs to be replaced about once a week and the chemicals once a day.
In clinical trials reported in the 15 December 2007 issue of the medical journal Lancet, five men and three women with end-stage kidney failure successfully dialyzed themselves with Gura's prototype device for up to eight hours.
Related Links
A wearable artificial kidney for patients on the go UCLA news
Some related publications
A wearable haemodialysis device for patients with end-stage renal failure: a pilot study The Lancet
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