Is CRRT really needed in Clinical Practice?

Abstract

In critical care medicine, renal replacement therapy is certainly needed. Of the available renal replacement therapies, continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) is frequently used for critically ill patients. However, there are few decisive studies of CRRT in the intensive care unit. It is important to establish whether CRRT really has advantages over other possibilities because it is expensive and requires many medical engineers. Here, examples of typical cases are presented and several meta-analyses from the literature are examined. From these data, it is concluded that CRRT is indeed efficient for patients suffering from either cardiogenic or septic shock.