| Theme |
Performance Evaluations for Blood Purification Devices and Characteristics of Dialysis Adequacy Indices |
| Title |
Basic principles and recent problems of various indices of performance -- Ultrafiltration rate (UFR) and sieving coefficient (SC) |
| Author |
Akihiro C. Yamashita |
Department of Human and Environmental Science, College of Engineering, Shonan Institute of Technology |
| [ Summary ] |
The ultrafiltration rate (UFR) per pressure and the sieving coefficient (SC) are two important parameters in ultrafiltration. The ultrafiltration rate (QF) in post-dilution hemofiltration and/or hemodiafiltration is usually set equal to 1/3 of the blood flow rate at most due to the concentration in the hemofilter. The SC for albumin in polysulfone membranes generally takes the maximum at the beginning of the experiment, which suggests that a large amount of albumin loss may be observed at the beginning of treatment. This phenomenon, however, is possibly caused by the amount of hydrophilic agents such as polyvinylpyrrolidone and cannot be accepted as a general rule that applies to all commercial dialysis membranes. Since SC for low molecular weight proteins decreases with the increase of QF, the product of QF and SC slowly increases. |