Safety of polymyxin-B-based hemoperfusion in kidney and liver transplant recipients

Infection represents one of the primary barriers to successful organ transplantation. Our principal end point was to use a new assay, Entotoxin Activity Assay (EAA), which was developed to rapidly detect endotoxin activity (EA) for an early diagnosis of this complication. We also sought to prove the validity and safety of endotoxin removal using polymyxin-B–based hemoperfusion (PMX-DHP). The criterion for inclusion in the study was suspected infection when a patient experienced at least 2 of the 4 criteria of the systemic inflammatory response syndrome. EAA was performed on 71 patients: 29 liver transplantations and 42 kidney transplantations. Twenty-eight patients (39.5%) with EA 0.60 underwent PMX-DHP treatment to remove endotoxins. Each treatment was performed for 2 hours with a blood flow of 100 mL/min. All of the patients were treated with PMX-DHP until achieving an EA 0.4. Stabilization of hemodynamic and inflammatory frameworks was observed after the PMX-DHP. At 30 days follow-up, all of the patients were alive with good graft function and low levels of EA. We think it might be useful to determine EA routinely in transplant patients and look forward to large multicenter clinical trials to accurately assess the benefits of the EAA plus DHP-PMX to treat transplant patients with sepsis.