Outcome of continuous arteriovenous haemofiltration (CAVH) in one centre.

Continuous arteriovenous haemofiltration (CAVH) has been adopted as the treatment of choice for acute renal failure (ARF) in critically ill patients in the intensive care units of Uppsala University Hospital since 1982. To know the outcome of CAVH during the last one and a half year this retrospective study was done on those patients seen in July 1987-December 1988. Forty patients aged 2 months-84 years (mean 57 years) were included. Treatment duration was 1-31 days (mean 10 days, patients with treatment duration less than 24 h were excluded). The majority of ARF causes were due to major surgery because there are two big cardiothoracic and vascular surgical centres with a high turnover in this hospital. In this study CAVH was found useful in the management of ARF in critically ill patients within the limits of its capacity of urea clearance. There is a notable improvement in the number of survivors in this study (55%) when this is compared to a previous study (45%) in a similar group of patients and in the same centre.