الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Fifty years ago, Belding Scribner and his colleagues at the University of Washington developed a blood-access device using Teflon-coated plastic tubes, which facilitated the use of repeated hemodialysis as a life-sustaining treatment for patients with uremia. The introduction of the Scribner shunt, as it became known, soon led to the development of a variety of surgical techniques for the creation of arteriovenous fistulas and grafts. Consequently, haemodialysis has made survival possible for more than a million people throughout the world who have end-stage renal disease (ESRD) with limited or no kidney function. Dialysis is defined as the diffusion of molecules in solution across a semipermeable membrane along an electrochemical concentration gradient. The primary goal of haemodialysis is to restore the intracellular and extracellular fluid environment that is characteristic of normal kidney function. This is accomplished by the transport of solutes such as urea from the blood into the dialysate and by the transport of solutes such as bicarbonate from the dialysate into the blood. Solute concentration and molecular weight are the primary determinants of diffusion rates. Small molecules, such as urea, diffuse quickly, whereas larger molecules, such as phosphate, β2-microglobulin, and albumin, and proteinbound solutes, such as p-cresol, diffuse much more slowly. In addition to diffusion, solutes may pass through pores in the membrane by means of a convective process driven by hydrostatic or osmotic pressure gradients a process called ultrafiltration |