What is the reasoning behind stack dialyzers? Why do clinics use this method and why do some do not? Is it better for the patients? How will this effect TMP on the machine? Thanks in advance for your help.

Tandem dialysis has been around for awhile, and has been done very successful in some cases and has not been successful in others. Units do this for there very large patients hoping that they can get better clearances and knock down the patient run from 5 hours to 4 to 4.5 hours. This adds cost to your treatments, extra bag of saline, connector, dialyzer. The second dialyzer if reusing, is very hard to reuse.

You will have to make modifications to your machine in order to do Tandem dialysis, because it will greatly effect your TMP, and your machines will be alarming constantly. Check with yur manufacturer before doing this.

There are two methods for performing dialysis with two dialyzers. One is parellel and the other is series. Most of the time machine modification is not required. What you end up with is about 1.5 times the clearance of just one dialyzer. For this reason treatment times can be reduced. Series also has the benefit of increasing Beta 2 M clearances due to increased ultrafiltration in the first dialyzer which creats solute drag and thus removes larger molecules. You can go to Molded Products for information and hardware. The web site is:
http://www.moldedproducts.com/