(250q) Electro-Aided Peritoneal Dialysis: A Fundamental and Modeling Analysis Approach

Renal replacement therapy can be conducted by using processes including Hemodialysis, Peritoneal dialysis, and a few others. Hemodialysis is not very popular among patients due to the possible yet debilitating side effects, which may involve low blood pressure, headache, tiredness, skin irradiation, and muscle cramps. Peritoneal dialysis, the alternative, is considered a much more patient friendly therapy when compared hemodialysis. Although, the most important drawback in Peritoneal dialysis is the low permeability of the peritoneal membrane, which makes the treatment significantly slower, often requiring between three to four batches of treatment per day. Membrane permeability can be modified by imposing a low value electrical field adjacent to the peritoneal wall. This soft tissue has been observed to be susceptible to electrical impulse and therefore allowing this characteristic to be exploited. This contribution analyzes the fundamental principles involved in permeability manipulation, and a mathematical model has been proposed to further study the phenomenon. The influence of different order of magnitude of the electrical fields has been studied to assess potential enhancement of the treatment in time duration and number of batches per day. The influence of blood shear thinning characteristics have also been investigated and illustrative results will be presented in the analysis.