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

Dialysis is a medical procedure that has dramatically improved the health of millions of kidney disease patients over the last 50 years. There has been much debate in recent years concerning how physicians can best control the amount of dialysis given to a patient. Several models exist that can quantify the amount of uremic toxin removed from the patient over the course of a dialysis session. These models are not widely used because they are complicated to apply, and difficult to understand and implement. A real time, automated system that can determine the amount of dialysis required for a given patient would offer an improved alternative to the typical calculated dialysis prescription. A possibility to continuously measure and monitor one or several dialysis parameters over the course of the session would provide a much more qualitative and quantitative measure of the dialysis progress. An `Optical Bridge´ technique that measures urea concentration in spent dialysate has been proposed as a method of obtaining information about the progress of a dialysis session. Preliminary feasibility studies have shown promising results, and have elucidated the major problems to be solved