Controversial Kidney-Dialysis Law Upheld

A law that has been around in Florida since 2002 was challenged in the court, and upheld. Florida doctors will continue to be barred from referring kidney-dialysis patients to labs in which the doctors have financial stakes.

The three-judge panel agreed with a lower court that, among other things, the law did not discriminate against Fresenius and Davita and didn’t violate their constitutional rights.

“Because it is reasonably conceivable that Florida ESRD (end-stage renal disease) patients would be better served if their physicians were prohibited from making self-referrals to associated laboratories, we conclude that the Florida act survives rational basis scrutiny and that the law does not deprive appellants (Fresenius and Davita) of their rights to substantive due process,” part of the ruling said.

It seems to me that if the doctors have to refer patients to a client that doesn't reward the doctor directly, then the doctor must be referring the patient to some other clinic. How does that go against Fresenius and Davita, who challenged the law?

If a doctor who has an interest in a DaVita clinic refers a patient to a Fresenius owned clinic, and vice versa, are they going to give a false report because the patient might end up in the other company's dialysis center? I wouldn't have thought so, it's more of a second opinion from someone who probably will have nothing to gain. So the two companies should stop complaining, IMHO.

You can more read about this here

Do you remember the first time you did it?

Dr Ray Ulan does, it was 21st December 1962, in Edmonton, Canada. He carried out the first hemodialysis treatment in Canada - what did you think I was discussing? ;)

The patient was Diane Sutton, 17 years old and expected to die, because that's what happened back then when your kidneys failed. And she nearly did, as part of the new equipment was missing.

Years later, Ulan would eventually lead Edmonton’s burgeoning nephrology specialty, watching dialysis improve and more patients receive successful transplants until his retirement a few years ago. Dialysis currently helps over 1,100 patients at 22 sites in northern Alberta.

You can read about it in the Edmonton Journal

Don't take some things as just routine, sometimes it was anything but routine.

New implant trial in UK hospitals

St George’s Hospital in London and Central Manchester University Hospital are trialling a new implant for hemodialysis patients, in an attempt to reduce scar tissue formation associated with traditional methods of attaching patients to machines.

The system they are testing is called Optiflow, made by BioConnect Systems. Eric Chemla, Consultant Renal Transplant and Vascular Surgeon at St George’s, who was the first surgeon in Europe to fit the tube, says: ‘There has been a huge rise in the demand for dialysis in recent years because of lifestyle-related illnesses such as diabetes. ‘This device has the potential to improve and save the lives of so many and, depending on long-term results, should be rolled out nationally by 2013.’

The strange thing is a search on google suggests that this is a system mentioned in 2010 as having European certification, and other instants have dates of 2006. So has the UK been sitting around ignoring new developments, or is this a new model? Or is it just the Daily Mail (link below)being slow to report on things? ;)

Read Daily Mail article, December 2012:

The Optiflow system was the subject of a research paper by some of the same team (plus others from outside the UK), published back in April 2012, which you can read here., while an earlier article from January 2011 mentions the device and describes the first UK implant as having taken place. This article has some nice graphics of the system as well.

AWAK Develop Hemodialysis System

AWAK Technologies attracted a fair bit of interest with their portable peritoneal dialysis unit, and our post on their device has been among one of the most popular. Now they have turned their attention to hemodialysis.

The special feature of their portable unit is the way it recycles the dialysate, thus reducing the volume of liquid required. They say it can be recycled indefinitely. Something which would help keep the cost of treatment down. Conventional hemodialysis uses about 120 litres of ultra-pure water to make the dialysate used in a single treatment, and the used dialysate is discarded. Just a bit wasteful.

The AWAK sorbent unit requires less than 6 litres of tap water and regenerates and reconstitutes spent dialysate into fresh dialysate. This unique feature eliminates the needs for expensive purification water system, thus, enabling dialysis to be performed in areas where such supplies are lacking. Less water equates to significantly less energy for heating the dialysate. AWAK say that their sorbent technology can be adapted to suit different dialysis modes and machines, and is smaller than current sorbent systems, which enables development of more portable devices. In earthquake victims, where Rhabdomyolysis can reduce the survival rates without proper treatment, portable units could help those who didn't get the proper treatment they initially needed and are at risk of ending up with damaged kidneys.

The sorbent system used was co-invented by Dr. David B. N. Lee and Dr. Martin Roberts (both of the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA), and their technology has been exclusively licensed by the University of California at Los Angeles and the Department of Veteran Affairs to AWAK Technologies

Read more here.

Hurricane Sandy affects dialysis patients

Hurricane Sandy caused dreadful problems, some of which are still around, when it hit America. Dialysis patients had some extra problems.

Clinics needed to use generators when their patients turned up, but those on home dialysis had problems with the power outage as well, as explained in this video report from EverydayHealth.

With winter approaching we strongly recommend you read this article on preparing yourself for problems in bad weather. It has some good advice which should help disaster proof the lives of those on dialysis.