A study manages to reduce kidney problems in complex heart surgery with a membrane

2023-05-15 14:26:33

A study led by the Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge has shown that the use of a new extracorporeal blood purification membrane manages to reduce acute renal failure after highly complex cardiac surgery.

The research was carried out with the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital –Can Ruti– in Badalona (Barcelona) and the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, and its results were presented in March 42 International Symposium on Intensive Care & Emergency Medicine (ISICEM), the Bellvitge Hospital explained this Monday in a statement.

Researchers have explained that the acute renal failure is a sudden loss of the kidneys’ ability to remove harmful debris carried by the blood, and which is a “major secondary problem in people admitted critically to hospitalas well as a frequent consequence of having undergone heart surgery, especially if it is highly complex”.

With this study, the researchers wanted to analyze whether these cases of renal failure after a complex cardiac operation would decrease if an oXiris enhanced adsorption membrane was connected to the extracorporeal circulation during surgery.

This type of latest generation membrane It began to be used a few years ago for continuous renal replacement therapy in ICUs and for the management of sepsis, but “this has been the first time after different studies in which its use has been associated with clinical benefits” .

The investigation

The researchers conducted a pilot test with twenty patients which confirmed the safety of the technique, and between 2016 and 2022 they included in the trial up to 343 patients from the Bellvitge and Can Ruti hospitals who underwent surgeries that required extracorporeal circulation for more than 90 minutes.

From the Biochemistry Laboratory of the Hospital de Sant Pau, the inflammatory response of the patients was evaluated by quantifying the inflammatory measures obtained during and after surgery.

The result was that in the control group patients (169 people) there were 40% of cases of acute renal failure during the week after the intervention, while in the patients in whom the new membrane was used (174 people) , that ratio dropped to 28%.

In addition, it was possible to verify that the device does not cause added problems to patients and that the perfusionist nurses –experts in extracorporeal circulation devices– were able to make it work in a simple way.