Parameter monitoring in medical treatment systems
AssigneeNxStage Medical, Inc.
InventorsMark T. Wyeth, Robert Paul Mccarty, Gregory Yantz, James Ian Johnson, Joseph E. Turk, Jr., James M. Brugger, Jeffrey H. Burbank
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A blood treatment system with pressure sensors may be configured to control blood flow to and from the patient and use readings of the pressure sensors to determine a change in a pressure drop across a flow restriction in the blood circuit to estimate a condition of the machine or the patient, or outputting data responsive to the estimation. Further embodiments employ measurement of pressure drop to detect abnormal viscosity or viscosity variations in order to detect possible infection.
Claims15
A method for performing a medical treatment on a patient, comprising:
- drawing a fluid from the patient;
- using a controller of a treatment machine and at least one sensor, detecting a viscosity-dependent parameter of the drawn fluid at multiple times in a course of the medical treatment or in the course of several of the medical treatments and storing time-resolved viscosity-dependent parameter data responsively to the detecting, wherein the time-resolved viscosity-dependent parameter data includes multiple measurements over time accompanied by time indications so as to reveal a trend with respect to time;
- estimating from the time-resolved viscosity-dependent parameter data whether the patient has an infection;
- and
- outputting a result of said estimating.
A blood treatment system, comprising:
- a machine comprising one or more pumps;
- a blood circuit in engagement with the one or more pumps and having an inlet line and an outlet line for conveying blood to and from a patient, respectively;
- and
- a controller configured to control the one or more pumps to convey the blood to and from the patient, the controller further configured to determine a change in a pressure drop across a flow restriction in the blood circuit at a given blood flow rate, the controller further configured to sample the pressure drop at multiple times over a period of time comprising a single treatment or multiple treatments and store data responsive thereto, the controller further configured to indicate that an effluent blood sample be collected when a time-resolved trend of the stored data deviates from a baseline trend beyond a threshold.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.