Chemical-Physical Mechanisms of Adsorption for Blood Purification

The removal of soluble toxins from blood is necessary in patients with severe kidney failure. The majority of blood purification techniques are based on the use of semipermeable membranes, such as for dialysis treatment. But, whenever there is the need to remove small soluble molecules from blood, the use of such purification techniques may exhibit limited efficiency. This leads to a search for better-performing treatments. Hemoperfusion, given the recent strong advances in the sorption media biocompatibility with plasma (or blood), is considered a promising blood purification technique. This introductive chapter aims at briefly presenting the phenomenology of the adsorption process, also providing some basic elements related to how to use equilibrium load data to define an adsorption isotherm, which can be used to size a hemoperfusion cartridge.