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Praise

This is impressive

Feb 11, 2015 12:28PM PST
Montreal teen invents $500 dialysis machine

Anya Pogharian, 17, was volunteering at a hospital dialysis unit when she found the inspiration for a high school science project: A more efficient dialysis machine that would be easier on patients suffering from kidney failure.

"It takes a lot of energy out of them," Pogharian told CBC News of the traditional four-hour, multiple-visits-a-week procedure. "They're very tired after a dialysis treatment."

After working on her invention for 300 hours, Pogharian created an affordable unit that could be used at home.

Her dialysis machine prototype would cost around $500 to buy, compared to the $30,000 it currently costs to purchase a machine.

Discussion is locked

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Very good work
Feb 12, 2015 2:20AM PST

and, as she says, was meant for the developing world. It may well have been similar to the very first working machines in both engineering and price. And then...along comes the government and the FDA. Voila! 30K after going through the approval process.

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then someone produces them
Feb 12, 2015 12:36PM PST

overseas and you buy them on the black market. The first right recognized in the Constitution was the right to life. Anything interferes with that, even if it's our own govt, is in violation of that.

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I'm surprised
Feb 12, 2015 12:46PM PST

nobody has invented a quicker centrifuge dialysis device which accelerates the sedimentation rate, in which the blood elements wanted to be retained are removed from the outer part of the centrifuge and the lighter elements to be removed are drawn off from the inner part of the centrifuge. They use centrifuges already in labs for the very purpose of separating the plasma from the red and white blood cells. It's the plasma that needs cleaning. The problem with dialysis is a lot that should remain is also lost, such as hormones.

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Future technology predictions
Feb 12, 2015 5:46PM PST

Firstly, centrifugation is limited in that it generally is only effective with particles of different specific gravities and immiscible liquids. I'm not a chemist and didn't get past 2nd year college chemistry but I remember some properties that were useful in qualitative and quantitative analysis. One was the ability of some substances to bind with others and form precipitates that could be spun out in a centrifuge. Another was the ability of some chemicals to dissolve substances when some solvents could not. For a very long time, I've been wondering if such could be used to strip plaque from the vascular system. Obviously, it could be risky but what if one could be injected with a chemical in increments and subject to something similar to apheresis? Could the fatty stuff be turned into small globules that would easily pass through one's system but be separated by centrifugation?

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shooting up lemon flavored Joy dish detergent?
Feb 13, 2015 5:33AM PST

Isn't that what Heparin is actually? A detergent?