Design and Implementation of a Wearable Artificial Kidney Prototype for Home Dialysis

Abstract

VI Abstract Hemodialysis is a life-preserving treatment for hundreds of thousands of patients with kidney failure. But the standard schedule of in-center HD three times a week is, at best, inconvenient, and at worst, hard on the heart. So home dialysis is the best solution. Home HD lets the patient set the schedule, the patient can choose treatment times taking in consideration his\her other life activities, so the patient will overcome the difficulties of hemodialysis in the hospital. As known, HD department is always overcrowded by patients , the patient needs to wait for long time, the difficulties of the transportation to reach the hospital, and the most important point is the high level of decontamination this can avoid the patient from infection" the device only for one person". The wearable artificial kidney prototype is a minimized dialysis machine. The patient have to enter only the target weight to be removed then the system process it and calculate all other parameters automatically. The system consists of two circuits the blood circuit and the dialysate circuit, blood filtration will be done in the dialyzer, before returning the filtered blood to the patient the system will monitor several parameters such as the temperature, pressure, flow, and air bubbles using an advanced microcontroller and a number of sensors. The artificial kidney equipped with visible and audible alarm system to aware the patients if there is any problem. Recently the wearable artificial kidney depends on many technologies such as a sediment filter which require approximately 5 gallons of water and it just removes the large particles from blood, so there is a need for another small filter, the other technology used is the silicon membranes "nano dimensions" "Silicon Valley Technology" which costs a lot, so the prototype provides the alternative in term of efficiency and price. VII م