By Cheshire Medical Center, a hospital affiliated with Dartmouth Health, has been providing continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT), a type of round-the-clock dialysis, to its intensive care unit for the past year.
The novel therapy enhances results, permits patients with kidney damage to stay near their home town while undergoing treatment, and enables Cheshire professionals to care for a greater number of critically ill patients. The hospital collaborated with the nephrology department at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon to purchase two CRRT machines and teach the ICU staff on their use.
Dr. Joseph Perras, the CEO and president of Cheshire, stated, “We at Cheshire are incredibly proud to provide kidney treatment for patients suffering from renal failure.” “We recognize the significance of having loved ones close by for patients’ families who are recuperating from cardiac arrest or any other major medical condition that caused an abrupt loss of renal function. When we didn’t have this technology, we could have had to send someone to a different facility so they could heal close to home.
According to a study published in critical care medicine, acute kidney injury, which is characterized by the organ’s abrupt failure to function properly, affects an estimated 60% of ICU patients globally. Patients who experience an acute reduction in kidney function have a 25% higher mortality rate due to the condition. A bloodstream infection or cardiac arrest, for example, might stop blood flow to the kidneys, resulting in septic shock and many kidney failures.
The medical director of Cheshire’s intensive care unit, Dr. Robert Westlake, who initially suggested funding CRRT, stated, “This program promises to save lives and improve patient outcomes like never before.” “Our ICU was quite crowded during the COVID pandemic, and many patients were having severe kidney problems. When hospitals were full, these patients’ options for receiving CRRT treatment were restricted. Normally, we would refer such patients to larger facilities like DHMC.”
The TeleICU service offered by Dartmouth Health’s Center for Connected Care is advantageous to patients in Cheshire’s intensive care unit. At DHMC, Dartmouth Health’s TeleICU hub is manned by critical care nurses and board-certified intensivists, doctors with specialized training in treating patients with life-threatening illnesses. Even the most critically ill patients can receive treatment close to home because to the TeleICU team’s partnership with Cheshire’s bedside clinicians to provide real-time care, support, monitoring, and clinical consultations around-the-clock.
Modern, interactive audiovisual technology that allows for two-way communication is used by the physicians. When a patient needs CRRT at Cheshire, remote nephrologists at DHMC can help. They can use the TeleICU platform to evaluate patients from a distance and coordinate their care with the critical care physicians and nurses in Cheshire.
The frequency of acute kidney injury necessitating ongoing renal replacement has increased by 10% annually over the previous 20 years. Cheshire created this program to address the issue because it recognizes its growing reach. This dialysis technique has already been utilized to save lives since it was introduced last year. Additionally, the apparatus can store blood and organs for possible donation. A CRRT device allowed support to be given to a patient who had severe neurological injuries and was not expected to live, enabling the patient to donate several organs and prolong the lives of five other people.
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