The University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital now has new technology to provide dialysis to its smallest patients.
Doctor Jennifer Jetton says the machine can provide dialysis for infants weighing between five and 20 pounds.
The Cardio-Renal Pediatric Dialysis Emergency Machine or CARPEDIEM was developed and has been in use in Europe since around 2013, and she says they’ve been just really anxiously waiting to have access to it in the United States.
Doctor Jetton is a pediatric nephrologist, and says they have been training and establishing protocols for the machine. She says it is not something they will use a lot right away.
Doctor Jetton says the machine helps the babies get through kidney problems.
She says those are the two main things that the kidneys do normally. Jetton says any new therapy requires lots of preparation before it is put into use.
Jetton says it has been an entire team effort to get the machine and work out all the training and protocols so they can put it into use.
