Medicine artificial kidney

Medicine has made major advances in the past 50 or so years partly by the use of devices to improve patient health. These devices include artificial hearts and pacemakers, machines for artificial kidney dialysis, replacement joints for hips, knees, and fingers, and intraocular lenses. These devices need to survive in sustained contact with blood or living tissue. 

The membrane separation processes described above represent the bulk of the industrial membrane separation industry. Another process, dialysis, is not used industrially but is used on a large scale in medicine to remove toxic metabolites from blood in patients suffering from kidney failure. The first successful artificial kidney was based on cellophane (regenerated cellulose) dialysis membranes and was developed in 1945. Over the past 50 years, many changes have been made. Currently, most artificial kidneys are based on hollow-fiber membranes formed into modules having a membrane area of about 1 m2 the process is illustrated in Figure 1.7. Blood is circulated through the center of the fiber, while isotonic... 

The application of polymeric materials in medicine is a fairly specialized area with a wide range of specific applications and requirements. Although the total volume of polymers used in this application may be small compared to the annual production of polyethylene, for example, the total amount of money spent annually on prosthetic and biomedical devices exceeds 16 billion in the United States alone. These applications include over a million dentures, nearly a half billion dental fillings, about six million contact lenses, over a million replacement joints (hip, knee, finger, etc.), about a half million plastic surgery operations (breast prosthesis, facial reconstruction, etc.), over 25,000 heart valves, and 60,000 pacemaker implantations. In addition, over AO,000 patients are on hemodialysis units (artificial kidney) on a regular basis, and over 90,000 coronary bypass operations (often using synthetic polymers) are performed each year (]J. 

Babb, A. L., et al. (1967). Engineering Aspects of Artificial Kidney Systems, Chemical Engineering in Medicine and Biology (editor D. Hershey), Plenum Press, New York, 289-332. 

Heparin has been used in medicine and surgery for nearly 40 years and in this time has maintained a well-earned reputation as an effective and safe drug [1]. I may claim a share in this as I was a member of the research team at the University of Toronto which developed heparin for clinical use. The major clinical uses of heparin are for the prevention of thrombosis and the prevention of clotting of blood. Thrombosis is the complex plugging of blood vessels which can occur in veins after operation and child-birth and can occur in arteries as the result of diet, age and stress. Clotting of blood is a serious problem in the use of heart-lung machines, artificial kidneys, etc. and the prevention of this by heparin is most important. My presentation reviews points about this drug which indicates its actions are due to its polyelectrolyte nature. 

With the production of artificial radioactive substances in 1934. the field of nuclear medicine was established. In 1937, the first radioactive isotope was used to treat a person with leukemia at the University of California at Berkeley. Major strides in the use of radioactivity in medicine occurred in 1946, when a radioactive iodine isotope was successfully used to diagnose thyroid function and to treat hyperthyroidism and thyroid cancer. Radioactive substances are now used to produce images of organs, such as liver, spleen, thyroid gland, kidneys, and the brain, and to detect heart disease. Today, procedures in nuclear medicine provide information about the function and structure of every organ in the body, which allows the nuclear physician to diagnose and treat diseases early. 

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