New 170/White Stripes in the Filter & Higher Pressures

[Black]

Anyone else getting more white stripes and higher pressures with the new 170 filters?

[Don]

What are white stripes? My pressures run 225 -250 dropping over the course of the treatment. What we are having is double the alarms we had before. Some reset with just picking up the lines and putting them back. Nothing is very apparent as to the cause. After about 20 minutes everything seems to run OK. Also about the same time as the change I am having problems breathing - is it related or something else ? Who knows, I have 2 Doc appointments next week - we'll see their thoughts.
My settings are 450 and FF 35 as far as the pressure goes.

Don

[Black]

If you look to the left side of the carteridge at the round clear cylinder which the filter tubes are in, are there more white stripes than there were with the old 160 cartridges?  We appear to be having more.  (They are actually filter tubes which are plugged, probably by glue during assembly, and there is no blood flowing through those tubes, so they stay white.)

We too occasionally get alarms at the begininning of treatment (usually air alarms or poor flow alarms) which have no apparent cause.  We hit "Mute", "Stop", look for a cause, find none, hit "Treatment" and usually get no other alarms.  Since we have started letting the machine run for a long time after prime is finished, and keep tapping the filter and the lines, the number of alarms has gone waaaaay down.

After Mike has been on for a while he says he can feel when the blood hits his lungs; sometimes it makes him cough.  If we raise the temp on the PureFlow that does away with that feeling in his lungs, BUT then he gets an itchy rash all around his buttonholes and eventually it spreads to his back.  So, we keep the temp at its lowest setting and if he gets cold (which is not often) he uses a blanket.   (We think the higher temp causes a release of chemicals from the plastic of the lines or the filter material which he has an allergic reaction to.  If we dump the saline used for prime and hang a new bag of saline he can run higher temps, but it's easier to just run a low temp and not use an extra bag of saline each run.)

Mike's settings are FF30 and blood flow 500.  He usually runs around 2:38, takes off .7 or .8 fluid, and processes 80 L of blood.

The pressures I was referring to are the ones you have to log every 30 minutes, venous, effluent, and arterial.  On the old 160 carteridges they were running 20 to 60 points lower.  The effluent occasionally runs over 300 during the first half hour or so, but does continue to come down a little for the first hour.  The venous and arterial are not that high but are higher than before, and also never come down to where they were with the old 160.

[Don]

I understand now. We have the same deal with the alarms. I do the same to reset etc.

My readings are -
Ven       Eff            Art
224    247   253
211   242   239
195   230   224
193   222   226
188   217   220
181   215   215
 
They are still working on my buttonhole. I am super bruised. Can't even see the fistula. I get cold too - I use a heating pad plus a blanket. I turned up the heat (pureflow) it caused condensation in the tub with our air conditioner on - gave us "Fluid in Tub" alarms - that's a treat too !!!
 

I feel something similar to Mike - only mine is when the Heparin from the Venous push's through.

Don

[Black]

Just saw this thread again so I'm updating.  The number of white (unused) bloodlines has gone way down -- this last lot has had NONE!  The pressures have also gone down a little.  I guess they are finally getting the bugs out, or the glue under control. 

[PrimeTimer]

We use Cartridge 170-C. Sometimes I see the "white streaks"  in the dialyzer filter during treatment, sometimes not and when we do, we don't necessarily get alarms if at all. I do "snap-n-tap" 3 times pre-treatment and this includes gently tapping both the bottom and the top of the filter each time. During training I don't recall being told anything about white streaks being bad other than the whiter or clearer the filter is towards the end of rinseback the better (I think meaning less blood clotting up or being left in the tubing).

[Simon Dog]

Mike's settings are FF30 and blood flow 500.  He usually runs around 2:38, takes off .7 or .8 fluid, and processes 80 L of blood.

How many liters if dialysate are you using per treatment?