Better outcome of vascular accesses for hemodialysis patients
Renal failure requires chronic hemodialisis treatment with extracorporeal blood circulation. This in turn requires the execution of arm vessel surgery known as arteriovenous fistula. Currently these procedures are done relying almost exclusively on the surgeon experience. Even with skilled surgeons, however, a high percentage of patients experience complications that require reoperation.
The ARCH system makes possible to plan such surgery in advance on the basis of patient’s data, and obtain a prediction of the vascular access function outcome, allowing an optimisation of the surgical procedure and a reduction of associated complications such as non-maturation.
A prospective study is running coordinated by the Mario Negri Institute in Italy. Preliminary results on 63 patients confirm the efficacy of this technology.
Bode A, Caroli A, Huberts W, Planken N, Antiga L, Bosboom M, Remuzzi A, Tordoir J. Clinical study protocol for the ARCH project - computational modeling for improvement of outcome after vascular access creation. J Vasc Access. 2011 Oct-Dec;12(4):369-76. doi: 10.5301/JVA.2011.8382.
Caroli A, Manini S, Antiga L, Passera K, Ene-Iordache B, Rota S, Remuzzi G, Bode A, Leermakers J, van de Vosse FN, Vanholder R, Malovrh M, Tordoir J, Remuzzi A. Validation of a patient-specific hemodynamic computational model for surgical planning of vascular access in hemodialysis patients. Kidney Int. 2013 Dec;84(6):1237-45. doi: 10.1038/ki.2013.188.
Public dissemination: Euronews coverage target also ARCH project http://www.euronews.com/2012/02/14/picture-my-body/
