There is a high incidence of acute kidney injury in critically ill children with congenital heart defects, sepsis, organ transplantation, and multiple organ dysfunction syndromes. Continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) is critical in these pediatric patients to provide support for fluid and electrolyte clearance till the kidney function returns to normalcy. However there is no CRRT device approved by FDA for use in children, forcing clinicians to unsafely adapt devices designed and approved for adults for use in the pediatric population. This leads to complications such as fluid imbalance, hemorrhage, hypotension, thrombosis, temperature instability, alterations in drug clearance, and electrolyte disorders.
The Kidney Injury and Dysfunction Support (KIDS) Care device developed at Georgia Tech and Emory University addresses the critical issues in pediatric CRRT by requiring <20% of the of blood normally used in adult machines and significantly reducing the margin of error in replacement fluid volume. Currently this device is in pre-clinical trials.
