Fogazzi G B
Divisione di Nefrologia, Ospedale Maggiore, IRCCS, Milano, Italy.
G Ital Nefrol. 2003 Jan-Feb;20(1):43-8.
Aminta Fieschi, a physician who is today remembered mainly for his contributions in the field of haematology, in the late 1940s devoted himself to the study of the treatment of uraemia. For this reason he commissioned, a manufacturer based in Milano, an artificial kidney, which was built on the design of the "rotating-drum kidney" described by Willem Kolff in 1947 in his epoch-making monograph "New Ways of Treating Uraemia". However, after using that artificial kidney in few patients Fieschi abandoned it due to dangerous cardiovascular complications, and shifted to the use of other safer techniques such as intestinal perfusion. This paper describes the main contributions of Fieschi in the field of nephrology as well as the features of artificial kidney he used, whose manufacturer has been identified and retraced after more than fifty years by the author.
