Monitoring blood removal failure during haemodialysis

Abstract

We examined the effectiveness of using a triaxial accelerometer to detect blood removal failure during haemodialysis. Monitoring actual extracorporeal blood flow during dialysis is crucial as duration and blood flow directly affect the efficiency of dialysis. However, a sudden decline in blood flow in the extracorporeal line can occur fairly easily, resulting in blood removal failure. The general method of assessing blood removal failure involves visual monitoring of the detector pillow, but dialysis circuits without a pillow are currently being used to prevent problems such as coagulation. Therefore, we measured changes in blood flow in the feeding circuit using a triaxial accelerometer connected to the arterial side drip chamber. We observed an increase in vibration amplitude of the circuit when the actual flow was lower than the ‘settings’ value for blood flow. Therefore, a triaxial accelerometer can be used to effectively and promptly detect a divergence between ‘settings’ flow and actual flow because it can measure changes in vibration amplitude due to an obstruction or a reduction in blood flow. Thus, establishing threshold values for this amplitude can result in the triaxial accelerometer replacing the currently used pillow device for monitoring blood flow for detecting blood removal failure.