Therapeutic apheresis is an extracorporeal blood purification procedure. Apheresis has its origin in the Greek word “Aphairesis“ (to remove, to take away).
Therapeutic Apheresis selectively removes pathogenic components from the patient´s blood or plasma. One common technique is therapeutic plasma-exchange where all plasma proteins are withdrawn, not only the pathogens. The lost plasma is replaced by albumin, colloid solutions and/or fresh frozen plasma from healthy donors. This led to the development of selective and specific blood and plasma purification systems.
The basic principle of selective apheresis systems consists of on-line plasma-separation, followed by in-line plasma filtration (plasma fractionation) or an adsorption column and in some cases dialysis is performed as a third step. Finally the purified plasma, still containing the useful proteins, is returned to the patient. In some cases whole blood perfusion is also possible, where the blood is perfused directly through an adsorption column.
The selective removal of pathogenic substances (e.g. LDL, autoantibodies, liver toxins) leads to an improvement in the patient´s health especially in cases where standard treatment is not enough.
