The Northwest Times

ARTIFICIAL KIDNEY SAVES LIFE OF WORLD WAR II VET

The life of a 38-year-old World War II veteran may have been saved by a team of doctors and technicians using an artificial kidney at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Seattle recently.

The veteran-patient who had been in hospital for about 10 days, was in convulsions and near death from acute kidney failure when he was attached to the device, one of two on the Pacific Coast. For eight hours the patient's blood was circulated by pumps through large sheets of cellophane, where impurities in the blood were removed.

The machine, constructed by Western Reserve University Medical School and Cleveland, O. Veterans Administration Hospital experts, simulates the work of the human kidney.

By the end of the eight-hour run, the patient had stopped convulsing and was alert. The ultimate outcome in the patient's condition depended on recovery of the patient's own kidneys, doctors said.

Benefit from a run on the artificial kidney, a doctor explained, lasts about 10 days, and subsequent resorts to the artificial kidney are usually less beneficial than the first use.

The artificial kidney, which is portable and has been used at various Seattle hospitals by the VA research team, is useful in certain cases of acute kidney failure where recovery of kidney function by the patient's possible. It does not materially benefit the patient with chronic renal disease because its effects are only temporary.

The artificial kidney project is operated by a research team from the Veterans Administration Hospital and the Department of Medicine of the University of Washington.

The team is composed of three physicians, Dr. Belding H. Scribner, Chief of Medical Research at the VA Hospital and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington, and research associates Dr. James M. Burnell and Dr. John E. Lucas, both in private practice in Seattle. Members of the technical team who participated in the eight-hour run are Masahito Yamasaki, Mrs. Sally Hobbs and Janet Johnson, all of VA Hospital staff and Elma Lile of the University Medical School.

A research grant from Abbott Laboratories helps support the project, and recently the Washington Heart Association provided a new grant of funds to support basic research with the artificial kidney on the effect of the failing heart on the kidney.