We have a specific patient that gets an air detection alarm every treatment, around the same time, and on any machine he runs on. There is no visible air, foam, bubbles, etc. anywhere in the blood line system. However, we have to turn the machine BFR down very low for several minutes in order for the alarm to quit. Has anyone experienced this and if so, what was the cause? Could it be lipids or something in his blood? I know his dialyzer is always a challenge for our reuse program...

I have heard that if you run a patient with too low of an Art. pressure you could start to degas the blood and form microbubbles. Gambro had a warning about this in the C3 manual.

mburgrss,are you in Z-ville? If so, bet you and the rest of the crew miss me terribly. Seriously, the name and Gambro just struck a memory so I thought I'd see.

Brutus, Not in the Z-ville area. More north, E. liverpool and Pittsburgh Areas.

Thanks for the info MBurgess. I wil look into the arterial pressures, but our machines are set and will not allow us to run any lower than a -260 arterial pressure. I think there must be another reason for this...

What type of machines?

The Handbook of Dialysis states " the inflow pressure is -80 to -200 mmHg, with -250mmHg being considered the usual limit beyond which one does not go to avoid hemolysis."

we have a problem with that now and then and it is usually a small clot swimming around the venous bubble chamber.