Developments in Apheresis Technology

Abstract

The earliest attempts at direct modification of the blood, or what we would now call hemapheresis, were carried out experimentally in France in the early years of this century [1], as indeed was the first recorded therapeutic intervention of this sort in a human [2]. The word “plasmapheresis” was coined soon after in the USA to designate the separation of plasma from whole blood with return of only the red cells to an animal subject [3]. The firest recorded clinical application of plasmapheresis was for the treatment of a patient with chronic renal disease, and was recorded as a success [2]. Later attempts on a variety of such patients were considered unsuccessful [4], and interest in this type of procedure seems to have waned after the mid-1920s [5] until the development of mechanical blood cell separators in the early 1950s. It is the biochemical devices that are to be discussed today.