Management of anuric intensive-care patients with arteriovenous hemofiltration.

It may be concluded from our results to date, that arteriovenous hemofiltration is an accurate and reliable method for the management of fluid balance in patients resistant to diuretics. Early use of this method may improve the prognosis of intensive-care patients by decongestion or dehydration of lungs, reduction of cardiac pre-and after-load and unrestricted infusion therapy for prevention of catabolism. In addition, the method has been shown to be useful for compensation of uremia and particularly for hypernatremia. The fact that this method requires no investment costs might be of particular interest to many intensive-care units which cannot afford expensive hemodialysis or hemofiltration machines.