Originally published in Volume 39 Issue 12 of Artificial Organs, 02 December 2015
I would like to thank Drs. Todd Ing and Paul Malchesky for inviting me to contribute a second editorial to the Artificial Organs “Pioneer” Series. My first contribution was based on my longstanding interest in the clinical problems of hypotension/hypertension during hemodialysis (HD) 1. This second article focuses on the historical recounting of a technical contribution to the “artiphysiology” of maintenance dialysis made in 1966, some 50 years ago. It comes off as a bit self-congratulatory, and for that I apologize in advance.
Working as a renal fellow for John P. Merrill, MD at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1961–1963, my individual laboratory project involved measuring transport across the small intestinal wall of a rat employing a Ussing chamber (Fig. 1). This technology can detect and quantify transport and barrier functions of living tissue by measuring the short-circuit current across the suspended epithelium. The Ussing chamber was invented by the Danish zoologist and physiologist Hans H. Ussing in 1946.