Schmidt JJ, et al. - This study was undertaken to investigate how the underlying disease entities influence the key coordinates of the therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE). In this work, it was demonstrated that patients with low hematocrit and high body weight did not receive the minimum recommended dose of exchange volume. In addition, reserchers found that compared to membrane TPE, centrifugal TPE allowed faster plasma exchange.

• A retrospective chart review was performed.
• Treatment indications were clustered into 4 categories and data were presented as median and interquartile (25–75%) range [IQR].

• In 185 patients (90 female, 48.6%), a total of 912 TPE treatments were performed within 1 year.
• The following represents the distribution of the treatment numbers to the pre-specified disease categories: transplantation (35.7%), neurology (31.9%), vasculitis and immunological disease (17.3%), and others including thrombotic microangiopathy (8.1%), critical care related diseases (5.4%), hematology [multiple myeloma] (1.1%), and endocrine disorders (0.5%).
• Researchers found that in patients with vasculitis and immunological diseases, the calculated plasma volume was significantly higher (3984 [3433–4439] ml), in contrast to patients treated for transplant related indications (3194 [2545–3658] ml; p=0.0003) and neurological diseases (3058 [2533–3359] ml; p < 0.0001).
• This was mainly ascribed to the differences in the hematocrit, which was 30.5 [27.0–33.6] % in the vasculitis/immunological disease patients and 40.2 [37.5–42.9] % in the neurological patients; p < 0.0001.
• Interestingly, data also revealed that treatment time using a membrane based technology was significantly longer than TPE using a centrifugal device 135.0 [125.0–140.0] min vs 120.0 [112.5–135.0] min.
• Moreover, findings demonstrated that the relative exchanged plasma volume was significantly lower in the treatment of vasculitis and immunological diseases as compared to treatments of transplant related indications and neurological diseases.