Welcome Letter |
Dear Colleague,
It is my pleasure to introduce the First International Conference on portable/wearable devices for dialysis and
ultrafiltration that will take place in Vicenza-Italy on September 30,October 2, 2010.
This is the first International Conference of its kind, dedicated to the new emerging technology of Wearable Artificial Kidney and Wearable/portable ultrafiltration devices. We warmly welcome you to Vicenza, a technologically advanced dialysis center where several innovations in dialysis and extracorporeal therapies were conceived and developed. The artificial kidney is a rather recent technology, but nevertheless, a continuous and progressive improvement has take place in the last decades. Since the beginning of dialysis therapy, important challenges emerged clearly: The need to apply dialysis to a growing population of Chronic kidney disease patients, the need for a reliable vascular access, the need for an efficient and clinically tolerated therapy possibly allowing a complete rehabilitation of the patient.
Significant improvements have been observed in recent years both from the clinical and technological point of view. Today dialysis is a well tolerated renal replacement therapy, extensively applied in developed countries, highly sophisticated and enriched of devices and techniques that make possible long term survival of CKD patients. Nevertheless, all these improvements have represented subsequent incremental steps in the progress of the therapy but a real quantum leap is today needed to move this therapy to a new level of efficacy. It has been clearly demonstrated that frequent and long treatments present superior outcomes leading to a kind of blood purification similar to that of the native kidney. Such techniques require more time and therefore are mostly envisaged as home based therapies and possibly nocturnal treatments. A completely new approach may consist in the application of devices that can be portable or even wearable making continuous dialysis possible while the patients remain ambulatory and are possibly restituted to a completely normal life. The WAK (wearable artificial kidney) has been proved feasible in recent studies although the technology is still very young and it requires a lot of improvement. The WUF (wearable ultrafiltration system) has also been tested resulting a potentially interesting treatment for patients with congestive heart failure offering the benefit of less re-hospitalization and a home based therapy of heart failure. The Vicenza Conference is the first scientific appointment designed to discuss the technological requirements and the clinical rationale for the development of new WAK and WUF technologies. The conference bridges the knowledge of health care providers, physicians and engineers to combine all the aspects related to this new therapeutic approach. The financial constraints, the need for more rehabilitation and the new possibilities offered by new sciences such as nanotechnology and microfluidics, will concur to pay a significant attention to these home-based therapies characterized by de-hospitalization, better mobility of the patients and improved clinical outcomes. Several challenges have to be faced, but we are sure that this conference will represent a moment of true advancement and scientific interaction to move forward in the achievement of the technological and clinical quantum leap for our patients with chronic kidney disease and chronic heart failure. We count on your presence in Vicenza and on your contribution to bring new ideas and new solutions to the many problems that still need to be resolved. Together, we will bring a new hope to our patients for a better future.