2018 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 23-27
Continuous blood purification therapy (CBP) facilitates improvements in severe symptoms of uremic toxemia, liver failure, and sepsis among other diseases in patients with unstable hemodynamics in critical and intensive care units. Unified safety standards of extracorporeal circuits are required for long-term CBP since this therapy must be performed securely and circuits must be reliably available to medical facilities in disaster events. However, various circuits have been produced by several Japanese medical equipment manufacturers, each with their own individual standards. “The recommendation of safety standards of consoles and extracorporeal circuits for continuous blood purification therapy” was proposed by the Japan Association for Clinical Engineers in 2012, and described seven safety standards for circuits. We validated two circuits produced by two manufacturers to determine whether they fulfilled the seven safety standards. We then compared the differences between four additional circuit standards, including priming volumes, endurance times at pump segments, access port positions in vein-side, and injection positions of anticoagulants. We found that no circuit fully satisfied the seven safety standards. Moreover, the four additional circuit standards were nearly completely different between the two circuits. We hope that the recommended safety standards will be widely disseminated and that unified consoles and circuits will be developed in the future.
