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Apheresis
The active principle

• Apheresis
• High blood pressure
• Laboratory
• Kidney biopsy
• Hemodialysis
• Peritoneal dialysis
• Transplantation
• Ultrasound

Apheresis

The active principle

The effect of plasmapheresis is based on the elimination of ciculating pathogenic substances from the blood fluid ("blood plasma").
In the first step of plasma exchange or plasmapheresis, blood cells and blood plasma are separated from each other and the patient's blood plasma is then discarded and replaced with a substitution solution (donated fresh plasma or albumin).

For certain indications, the procedure known as immunoadsorption is available, which is able to specifically remove certain factors (antibodies) from the blood.

The advantage of immunoadsorption is that the patient receives the purified blood plasma back and thus the administration of a substitution solution can be avoided.

In many cases, the blood can be taken from the patient via a vein in the arm; only in individual cases is a so-called central venous catheter required to take the blood.

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Immunoadsorption in transplantation medicine

Indications for therapy

In transplantation medicine, antibodies (so-called HLA antibodies) that are directed against the tissue properties of the new organ can be removed from the transplant recipient's blood using immunoadsorption.

In patients in whom these antibodies are already detectable in large quantities prior to transplantation, this method can often make transplantation possible in the first place. In addition, immunoadsorption enables effective treatment of antibody-mediated ("humoral") rejections that only occur after transplantation.

A special immunoadsorption procedure (Glycorex column) is able to selectively remove antibodies against a foreign blood group from the blood. In this way, it is possible in most cases to transplant an organ with a foreign blood group as part of a living kidney donation.

Apheresis procedure

Procedures offered at the Heidelberg Kidney Center

• Plasma exchange
• Cascade filtration
• lipid apheresis
• Rheopheresis
• Bilirubin apheresis
• Prometheus apheresis
• Protein A immunoadsorption
• Globaffin immunoadsorption
• Therasorb immunoadsorption
• Glycorex Immunoadsorption