In medicine, hemofiltration, also haemofiltration, is a renal replacement therapy similar to hemodialysis which is used almost exclusively in the intensive care setting. Thus, it is almost always used for acute renal failure. It is a slow continuous therapy in which sessions usually last between 12 to 24 hours and are usually performed daily. During hemofiltration, a patient's blood is passed through a set of tubing (a filtration circuit) via a machine to a semipermeable membrane (the filter) where waste products and water are removed. Replacement fluid is added and the blood is returned to the patient.

The Principle of Hemofiltration

As in dialysis, in hemofiltration one achieves movement of solutes across a semi-permeable membrane. However, solute movement with hemofiltration is governed by convection rather than by diffusion. With hemofiltration, dialysate is not used. Instead, a positive hydrostatic pressure drives water and solutes across the filter membrane from the blood compartment to the filtrate compartment, from which it is drained. Solutes, both small and large, get dragged through the membrane at a similar rate by the flow of water that has been engineered by the hydrostatic pressure. So convection overcomes the reduced removal rate of larger solutes (due to their slow speed of diffusion) seen in hemodialysis

?