[Assessment of APD cyclers].
Automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) is a home treatment that allows exchanges to be performed during the night by means of a mechanical device (cycler). The most important requirements of a cycler are a user-friendly intuitive interface, safety in usage, noiselessness and full portability. These characteristics influence patient satisfaction and consequently patient compliance with dialysis treatment. Other important features of the device are online pressure and flow sensors to avoid damage to the peritoneum, control of inflow and outflow rates, and flexibility in performing different treatment schedules. Today's cyclers allow all these functions and appear to respond well to the current clinical requirements. Another advantage of cyclers is that they can store treatment data on memory cards and send information about home APD treatment to the dialysis center. However, these systems use specific software developed by their manufacturers and do not interact with software of other producers nor with the most common databases; moreover, the data cannot be uploaded to hospital files. The availability of open software for cyclers allowing data to be exported to common database formats would enable us to compare different APD systems. A future goal might therefore be the integration of different APD software systems into a global standard.
Corciulo
R
R
Divisione di Nefrologia, Azienda Ospedaliera, Policlinico, Università degli Studi, Bari. r.corciulo@nephro.uniba.it
Russo
R
R
D001331:Automation; D006801:Humans; D010530:Peritoneal Dialysis / Q000295:instrumentation*