Individually adjusted absolute blood volume feedback control: A promising solution for intradialytic hypotension

Intradialytic hypotension (IDH) remains one of the most frequent complications associated to hemodialysis (HD), frequently triggered by a reduction in absolute blood volume (ABV) not compensated by vascular refilling. A recently developed dilutional method allows routinary measurement of ABV and, by a simple algorithm, may turn blood volume monitor (BVM) guided UF (ultrafiltration) biofeedback into an ABV control, automatically adjusting UF rate to maintain ABV above a preset threshold. The aim of this study is to identify an individual critical ABV threshold and test the ability of an ABV feedback control to avoid IDH.

We studied 24 patients throughout three consecutive midweek HD treatments. ABV and blood pressure (BP) were measured every 30 min and anytime the patient referred any symptoms to identify each patient's critical ABV (ABV at the time of hypotension). A fixed bolus dilution approach at the start of HD was used to calculate ABV. Then, patients were followed through three additional HD treatments and IDH development was analyzed.

Seventy-one treatments performed in 24 patients. ABV monitoring showed a constant decrease as HD treatment progressed. Thirteen IDH events were observed in eight different patients, with a mean systolic BP drop in IDH treatments of 37.38 ± 4.31 mmHg and a mean adjusted ABV at hypotension of 71.07 ± 14.88 mL/kg. Critical ABV was individually set in patients prone to IDH. As expected, ABV feedback control successfully maintained ABV over preset critical ABV. IDH events were avoided in 21 out of 22 treatments performed. ABV drop was successfully reduced, as well as SBP drop (despite similar UF than prior to ABV feedback control implementation).

ABV feedback control avoided IDH in 21 out of 22 treatments performed by maintaining blood volume above critical ABV, significantly reducing ABV variations without compromising prescribed UF.