• Richard Fisher, Katie Lei, Mike J Mitchell, Gary W Moore, Helen Dickie, Linda Tovey, Siobhan Crichton, and Marlies Ostermann.
• Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, Department of Critical Care, London, SE1 9RT, UK.
• Bmc Nephrol. 2017 Oct 2; 18 (1): 304.

BackgroundRegional anticoagulation with citrate is the recommended first line treatment for patients receiving continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT). There is wide variability in filter patency which may be due to differences in patient characteristics and local practice. It is also possible that citrate has effects on primary and secondary haemostasis, fibrinolysis and platelet function that are still unknown. The primary aim of the study is to describe the effect of citrate on coagulation and fibrinolysis pathways in both the patient and the haemodialysis circuit.MethodsThe study will recruit 12 adult patients admitted to the intensive care unit, requiring CRRT with regional citrate anticoagulation for acute kidney injury. Patients with pre-existing thrombotic or bleeding tendencies will be excluded. Thrombin generation, clot lysis and platelet function will be measured at baseline and at 12, 24, 36, 48 and 72 h after commencing CRRT (from the patient and from the circuit). We will describe the evolution of parameters over time as well as the differences in parameters between the patient and the circuit.DiscussionThe study will provide new data on the effects of citrate during continuous renal replacement therapy which is not currently available. We will minimise confounding factors through the use of tight exclusion criteria and accept that this will slow down recruitment. Depending on the results, we hope to incorporate the findings into existing clinical guidelines and clinical practice with the aim to prevent premature filter clotting and interruptions in treatment.Trial RegistrationThe study was registered with clinicaltrials.gov on 10th June 2015 ( NCT02486614 ).

23 keywords...

hide…