Good biocompatibility of the polyamide hemofilter.

Chronic hemofiltration (HF) is now a well-established method, especially for elderly uremic patients and those suffering from cardiovascular problems. This is due to the fact that chronic HF offers superior treatment comfort with less hypotensive episodes, vomiting, muscle cramps and febrile reactions. Apart from the different blood purification techniques involved in chronic HF compared to hemodialysis (i.e. convection versus diffusion), it might well be that the better treatment comfort is attributable to a certain extent to the polyamide HF membrane used in our HF treatments. We studied different biocompatibility parameters and received the following data: (a) leukocytes and thrombocytes remained unchanged during a treatment session; (b) elastase increased slightly but there was no difference between the polyamide and polycarbonate membrane, and (c) arterial and venous concentrations of C5a and C3d remained almost unchanged. The superior treatment comfort and better vascular stability of HF over hemodialysis might also be due to the improved biocompatibility of the applied hemofilter as the polyamide membrane induces no changes in different biocompatibility parameters such as leukocytes, thrombocytes, C5a or C3d.