2026 Volume 33 Article ID: 33_R7
After graduating from Chiba University, I entered to the department of surgery of the postgraduate school of medicine in the same university. And I then went to the United States and spent three years in the department of surgery of the medical schools of New York University and Yale University studying pathophysiology of sepsis. After returning to Japan, I was appointed to the founding chairman of the department of emergency and critical care medicine of the School of Medicine of Chiba University. At that time I had become very much interested in the theme of “Pathophysiology and treatment of septic acute organ dysfunction”. Especially I was very much interested in “cytokine theory of disease” proposed by Tracey K, who said that cytokine storm is the mainstay of the pathophysiology of sepsis. Then, I began to routinely check interleukine-6 (IL-6) blood levels of patients in clinical settings in ICU and applied the cytokine storm-targeted critical care medicine. As the countermeasures against cytokine storm, I introduced the continuous hemodiafiltration with cytokine-adsorbing hemofilter (CAH-CHDF). CAH-CHDF could effectively, continuously and non-selectively remove many kinds of cytokines from the blood stream of the critically ill patients and it could lower blood level of cytokines. And more importantly critically ill septic patients who were treated with CAH-CHDF could improve organ dysfunction and general conditions. CAH-CHDF also improved even the survival of critically ill septic patients. Thus, nowadays, CAH-CHDF is inevitable modality for critically ill septic patients suffering from cytokine storm.
