Technology
Today’s dialysis machines are far from perfect. Their efficiency is only around 10% of that of a functioning kidney, and when used three times per week, they are incapable of controlling unhealthy fluctuations in the concentrations of metabolites such as urea in the blood. Many researchers are seeking to design an artificial, wearable kidney that would make dialysis a more effective therapy.
Nanotechnology offers enticing possibilities in this area. Thin nanomembranes would be more permeable to solutes in the blood than thicker conventional membranes, and these nanomembranes could be carefully engineered to contain highly selective pores, instead of the randomly sized pores present in membranes used today. Particular pores, for example, could be designed to selectively filter middle-sized molecules from the blood. Some middle-sized molecules, such as beta-microglobulin, can cause debilitating health problems when they accumulate in the body, and traditional dialysis machines do a poor job of filtering these molecules from the blood. Eventually, researchers hope to create a library of engineered pores that would allow nephrologists to come up with customized dialysis regimens specifically tailored to their individual patients. No data are available bench, animal or human trials.
Read more about this topic: Wearable Artificial Kidney
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
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—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)