Talked with someone at NxStage & was told you could not do nocturnal hemodyalsis with their machine.
Is this true?
Seems I read somewhere you could.
On Saturday I was on a panel at the RSN meeting (moderated by Dori) with someone who uses the NxStage nocturnally – he runs for 5.5 hours over night. I did not have a chance to ask questions since I was suppose to be answering them but I did wonder if he went back to bed after coming off. I assume he used a stand alone heparin pump – he didn’t say one way or another.
He said he hung 20 liters of dialysate for his 330 minute run … so that implies a dialysate flow rate of about 60 ml/min. I wonder if the low dialysate flow lessens the impact of increased run length? i.e. 330 minutes at 60 ml/min would have the same impact as 240 minutes on a Baby K at 300 ml/min.
Not to be argumentative, but it doesn’t prove it’s being done at all. It proves it’s being done with some significant limitations, at best.
Pierre
:roll: …are you sure? Did you see, did you hear? hehe. 
Previously I have objected to Pierre’s posts that define “short” dialysis as a certain amount of time, howeveer, it is hard for me to credit 5.5 hours as a true nocturnal run except it is being done at night. As Pierre has noted a major advantage of nocturnal is being able to turn down the blood pump speed - my fellow panelist did not report what blood pump speed he was using.
I don’t think anyone doubts you can remain hooked up to a NxStage for an extended period of time, the quesiton is - what is the marginal value of increasing the run length if you can not increase the amount of dialysate as well?
NxStage was exhibiting at the conference. Their new device that produces dialysate in the home would allow higher dialysate flow rates. They’re saying that it makes two or three days worth of lactate based dialysate at a time but I will predict now that some dialyzors will use the entire production for one nocturnal run.