Plasmaphoresis

I got to see a plasmaphoresis machine in operation, and I must express my geeky amazement of the process. Plasmaphoresis is a process where a patients blood is extracted, centrifuged, the plasma is replaced with sterile human albumin, and then returned to the patient. The machine consists of several peristaltic pumps and a large rotor. There is a sterile tubing rig that connects to the patient, through the various pumps and the rotor, then it connects to a waste plasma bag, an albumin source, and a saline source. The blood is then pumped into the rotor. The rotor has a large flat section of tubing that allows the red and white blood cells to separate from the plasma. They are drawn off separately. The waste plasma and fresh albumin are fed through twin peristaltic pumps to ensure that the volume of plasma is replaced exactly. The fresh albumin and red blood cell fraction then meet and go through a bubble trap before being returned to the patient.

I am still not sure how the centrifugation rotor spins without tangling the tubes, but it does. This is important as it means that the machine is never in direct contact with any blood. The tubing rig is discarded after each treatment. In a single treatment, the machine can replace some 60% of the patient's plasma.

Amusingly, my grandmother refers to dish washers and clothes washers as chiclé-chaclé based on the noise they make. Since the peristaltic pumps make a very distinct clicking noise and the device is essentially a blood washer, it seems that chiclé-chaclé is probably the best name for it.

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