Emerging technologies in extracorporeal treatment: focus on adsorption

As an extracorporeal technique for blood purification, haemoadsorption was introduced in the early 1960s along with other physico-chemical methods. The problem of poor biocompatibility of uncoated adsorbents was resolved by coating adsorbent granules with haemocompatible membranes. Use of coated adsorbents instead of uncoated ones reduces the efficiency of haemoperfusion. As a result, for many years the use of adsorption was limited to only acute poisoning. Since the 1990s interest in the use of adsorbents in extracorporeal medical devices has been rising again. In this paper some recent developments in synthesis and application of novel uncoated medical adsorbents are discussed.