title: Therapeutic plasma exchange in an intensive care unit (ICU): a 10-year, single-center experience.
abstract: Therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) is a blood purification method that effectively allows for the removal of waste substances by separating out plasma from other components of blood and the removed plasma is replaced with solutions such as albumin and/or plasma, or crystalloid/colloid solutions. Plasma exchange therapies are becoming increasingly essential, being used in daily practice in critical care settings for various indications, either as a first-line therapeutic intervention or as an adjunct to conventional therapies. This retrospective clinical study analyzes 10-year therapeutic plasma exchange activity experience in an 18-bed ICU at a tertiary care university hospital with a large, critically-ill patient population. Medical records of 1188 plasma exchange procedures on 329 patients with different diagnoses admitted from January 2000 to July 2010 were evaluated. The aim of the study was to determine the TPE indications and outcomes of the patients who underwent TPE in the ICU with conventional therapy. The secondary endpoints were to determine the differences between different patient groups (septic vs. non-septic indications) in terms of adverse events and procedural differences.
authors.affiliation: Ankara University, Faculty of Medicine, Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, Ibn-i Sina Hospital, 06100 Ankara, Turkey. draliabbas@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Ali Abbas
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Yilmaz
authors.forename: Ozlem Selvi
authors.initials: OS
authors.lastname: Can
authors.forename: Mehmet
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Oral
authors.forename: Necmettin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Unal
authors.forename: Erol
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ayyildiz
authors.forename: Osman
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ilhan
authors.forename: Melek
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tulunay
mesh_terms: D016638:Critical Illness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010951:Plasma Exchange / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000379:methods*; D012189:Retrospective Studies