Treatment of Acute Renal Failure in Intensive Care Patients by Continuous Arteriovenous Hemofiltration (CAVH): Two Years' Experience in Two Centres

The study objective was to evaluate the outcome of continuous arteriovenous hemofiltration (CAVH) as a first choice treatment for acute renal failure (ARF) in critically ill intensive care patients in two centres with a long experience in the field of continuous renal replacement therapies. Sixty consecutive intensive-care ARF patients from Uppsala Centre and 71 consecutive ARF patients from Vicenza Centre were included during a period of two years. Their age range was 58±16 and 52 ± 15 years in Uppsala and Vicenza, respectively. CAVH was performed in the postdilution form using different types of hemofilters. Three choices of vascular access were utilised in each centre, namely: the Buselmeier shunt, femoral vessel catheter and the Scribner shunt.The pre-treatment serum urea level (mean ± SD) in the Uppsala patients (30 ± 14 mmol/l) was significantly higher (p<0.001) than that of the Vicenza patients (17 ± 10 mmol/l). The Uppsala patients had a longer treatment duration than the Vicenza patients; 8 ± 6 v...