Specialists from the “Sfantul Ioan” Hospital in Bucharest will start soon the first clinical tests for the innovative dialysis method which won the gold medal in last year’s Geneva Invention Salon. The method in question is machine-free dialysis, the method by which patients will be able to keep their disease in check on their own, using a remote control, no longer having to resort to frequent hospital visits to have the solution in which the peritoneum is generally kept replaced.
Thus, patients will be able to renounce the classical dialysis machines and the tubes they had to wear permanently. They will be wearing an internal device, instead, by means of which they will be able to exercise pressure on the body using the remote control. “The patient will be able to live a normal family life (…). He will be able to control on his own the pressure the device exercises on the body, he will be able to set the quantity of urine his body produces every day and toxins will be eliminated through the device,” Professor Alexandru Ciocalteu stated, quoted by adevarul.ro. According to the same source, patients will be monitored nonetheless by doctors online through regional centres.
The new dialysis method recently received the national patent from the State Office for Inventions and Trademarks (OSIM) and is awaiting an international patent. By applying the new method, the Romanian state’s expenses for the treatment of patients undergoing dialysis would be reduced ten times, according to the physicians who invented the new procedure. “The Romanian state pays over EUR 200 M annually to cover dialysis treatment, while the new method would cost it a mere EUR 25 M. However, we need EUR 300,000 to conduct the first tests and EUR 1 M to set up a national system, to cater for everyone. We are seeking sponsors, but exclusively from the ranks of Romanian investors,” Ciocalteu added. 7,800 patients are undergoing dialysis in Romanian hospitals every other day. A great portion of these are taken to hospital by ambulance, three times a week.
