Disaster last night!

[Adam_W]

Ok, so I got on the machine last night around 9pm like usual, and the first half of the treatment went fine. Suddenly about half way through, I started feeling a little dry, which I thought was kind of odd because I still had .5L to go till I reached my dry weight. Not too long after that, I get a 715 alarm and everything just shuts down. I noticed immediately that my blood had turned really dark brown (it had it's normal colour less than a minute before), and I had dialysate pouring out of the bottom of the cycler. And then came the crash. Right as I was starting to get myself off the machine (no rinseback with blood looking like that!), my bp plummeted and I had a hard time getting off because I wasn't able to give myself any saline. So I just unhooked, and immediately propped my legs up and reclined back as far as I could go. After a couple minutes I was able to stand up to get my standing bp (97/75, and it started around 140/85) and my weight. I discovered that I was .5 kilos BELOW my dry weight, and that was with only half a tx. So either my machine is malfunctioning, or I got a bad scale reading when I got my pre weight. (Most likely it's the scale). So, I called my on-call nurse, and then NxStage, and everyone has come to the conclusion that it started with a blood leak in the dialyzer, and I may have had dialysate actually enter my blood (good thing I didn't rinse back). They think the dialysate leak may have been over-pressure in the balancing chamber due to the leak in the dialyzer, and that gave me the 715 alarm and stopped the machine. NxStage is having me return the cartridge, and I also found out from my nurse that I was the fourth or fifth patient to have a similar problem yesterday! We think it's a bad lot of cartridges. The lot # is 8057707. I didn't dialyze today, but I'll be using a different lot # tomorrow and hopefully things will go better.

Adam

[silverhead]

Wow Adam, that's scary, glad you caught it when you did, but understand it leaves you a little shaken, We have had so many leaker's recently, we are almost gun shy now, they say they have made some improvements in the carts, but is this part of the new ones?

[paris]

Very scary, but you seem to have handled the situation very well.  Your knowledge really helps you when things go wrong.  Hope today goes much better!   

[twirl]

     oh Adam, a better day will be today

[monrein]

Does Nxstage have a higher percentage of problems than other, larger machines?

[paul.karen]

Scary stuff glad you caught it and didnt take any of that bad blood back.

Do the cartridges say where they are made by any chance??

[silverhead]

Mexico.......

Wonder what the testing protocol is.

[breezysummerday]

Silverhead has posted some cartridge/lot numbers in the Leaky Leaky thread by terry3004.
Thank heavens you didn't rinse back.

[G-Ma]

Good you came out of that ok.  Those are scarey.

[wrandym]

Wow!  Glad you had the knowledge to get yourself through

[Razman]

Does Nxstage have a higher percentage of problems than other, larger machines?

I had talked to my neph about getting Nxstage and he said he was not satisfied with the specs and  reliability.  I wonder if anyone has ever seen data that compares different machines.

[Sluff]

I'm just glad you are OK Adam. I think NxStage has been having problems with those cartridges now for awhile. I think it is the same problem anyway.

[pelagia]

Adam - thank goodness that you were able to handle that situation. Sounds so scary. 

How the heck can a company continue to distribute malfunctioning cartridges if they know they have problems?  Aren't they setting themselves up for a lawsuit?

[skyedogrocks]

Sorry to hear that Adam.  We also had a blood leak last week with Rob.  He was going fine for an hour and we got the 715 alarm.  I shut it down real quick and restarted but got the same alarm.  We didn't rinse back because it wouldn't let us.  However, Rob's blood didn't change colors, it was still the same.

So annoying because you can't re-prime, you have to give the machine time to dry and re-set.

Does Nxstage have a higher percentage of problems than other, larger machines?

I had talked to my neph about getting Nxstage and he said he was not satisfied with the specs and reliability. I wonder if anyone has ever seen data that compares different machines.

Razman - we haven't had a lot of problems with NxStage and the results for Rob have been amazing.  In March of 2009 he will be on it for 2 years and it's been the best thing for him.

[monrein]

I'm very curious about why we don't have them in Canada.  I've heard the same as Razman from the few hospital people I've mentioned it to, although we really push home hemo here.  Everything is supplied but they don't seem to like Nxstage.  I wonder if they are more expensive machines?  Curious.

[pelagia]

Hope everything is going well for you today Adam!

[David13]

Sorry to hear about the difficulties, Adam.  Have you discovered yet if it was the scale or the machine? 

[kidney4traci]

Hope you are having better treatments...