title: Renal replacement therapy in the ICU: the Australian experience.
abstract: The structure of health care drives medical practice in a powerful way, shaping choices of therapy and approaches, and influencing scientific evidence. The Australian experience with continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) confirms the importance of structure. A public health system like that of Australia's contains the following variables: well-developed intensive care tradition and expertise, a dominant "closed" intensive care unit (ICU) model, well-developed training of intensive care nurses with established one-to-one nurse-patient ratios, salaried medical practitioners, overworked general dialysis units with inadequate nursing resources, and lack of fee-for-service incentive for nephrologists to see ICU patients with acute renal failure. The likely outcome of such a system is for CRRT to be run by intensive care staff. As shown by a recent regional survey, this approach, although somewhat unique, is dominant and appears to work well with excellent clinical results and constant clinical research output.
authors.affiliation: Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre, Melbourne, Australia. rb@austin.unimelb.edu.au
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bellomo
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cole
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Reeves
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Silvester
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D003422:Critical Care; D006801:Humans; D009398:Nephrology; D017582:Renal Replacement Therapy