Continuous renal replacement therapies

Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy (CRRT) is frequently used in patients admitted to intensive care units with multiple organ failure and acute renal failure. These patients are prone to developing hypotension making it very difficult to use conventional haemodialysis for their treatment. When compared to conventional haemodialysis CRRT has obvious clinical advantages. These advantages are mostly due to slow volume and uraemic toxin removal leading to better haemodynamic tolerability for such patients. In our unit during the year 2000, 58 patients were submitted to CRRT: 14 of the patients underwent treatment with continuous veno-venous haemofiltration and 44 were submitted to continuous veno-venous haemodiafiltration. The mean patient age was 61.7 years (range: 20-87), 36 male and 22 females. Twenty patients (43.1%) had sepsis, 18 (31%) were post open-heart surgery, 7 (12%) had multiple organ failure, 4 (6.9%) were polytraumatised, 3 (5.2%) were post neurosurgery and 1 (1.8%) was a liver transplant patient. Despite the grave prognosis of these patients, 22 (37.8%) survived and 36 (62.2%) died. Of the patients that survived, 10 (17.2%) recovered renal function and 12 (20.6%) remained on a regular haemodialysis programme. The authors conclude that CRRT seems to be an alternative to conventional haemodialysis for the treatment of those patients with acute renal failure.