Japan: In a new study published in the Karger journal Blood Purification, it was shown that the innovative capped needle efficiently and successfully eradicated all apparent bubbles; hence, it might be a helpful device for hemodialysis therapy.
Once automated priming, air bubbles in the dialysis circuit are seldom apparent; however, they are frequently evident after the needles are manually linked to the circuit. To avoid this problem, it was recommended that needles be primed automatically by the hemodialysis machine. Shibata K. and colleagues developed and produced a unique capped needle to link the needles to the extracorporeal circuit prior to the automated priming of the hemodialysis machine. This study evaluated the efficiency of this unique capped needle to the standard approach for avoiding air bubbles.

Ten different capped needles were evaluated to see if the dialysis machine operates properly and eliminates air bubbles even with the connected capped needle. Following that, 25 trials were conducted using the traditional procedure, in which professional nurses physically connected the needle. The air bubbles were recorded extensively with naked eyes in both procedures. It was projected that the capped needle would leave minimal bubbles in the circuit. A further experiment was performed utilizing a microparticle counter to assess the size and quantity of bubbles in order to evaluate fewer bubbles.
The main findings of this study were as follows:
1. During each of the 10 tests, researchers meticulously sought for air bubbles but found none that could be seen with the naked eye.
2. Bubbles were evident in 29 of 50 instances using the traditional approach.
3. The capped-needle approach produced much fewer bubbles than the usual method (p 0.0001, Pearson's χ2 test).
4. When the innovative capped needles were used for priming, the average residual air volume in the extracorporeal circuit was 0.0999 ± 0.2438 nL in the additional studies utilizing the microparticle counter.
In conclusion, the authors suggested that the removal of air from the dialysis circuit may enhance the prognosis of the patient.
Reference:
Shibata, K., Shinzato, T., Toma, S., Nakai, S., Kobayashi, Y., Hashimoto, T., & Tamura, K. (2022). Novel Capped-Needle Device: A Novel Safety Feature to Eliminate Air Bubbles in Hemodialysis. In Blood Purification (pp. 1–6). S. Karger AG. https://doi.org/10.1159/000524357