A device that filters waste products and excess fluid from a patient's blood outside the body, performing the function of failed kidneys. The first working version, built by Dutch physician Willem Kolff with engineer Hendrik Berk in 1943 in Nazi-occupied Kampen, Netherlands, was a "rotating drum kidney": roughly 20 meters of cellophane sausage-casing tubing acting as a semipermeable membrane, wound around a slatted wooden drum that rotated, driven by an electric motor, inside a tank of dialysate fluid. Blood was drawn from the patient into a sterile jug, treated with anticoagulant, and allowed to flow by gravity through the cellophane tubing while waste solutes diffused across the membrane into the surrounding fluid bath; a full treatment took about six hours, and the original device ran at low pressure and could not remove excess fluid, only diffusible wastes. Built partly from salvaged wartime materials, it is regarded as the first artificial kidney to achieve real, sustained clinical success and laid the direct technical foundation for modern hemodialysis.
Facts
Disputed
YearThe year of Kolff's rotating drum kidney itself is not in question; what is debated is credit sequencing. German physician Georg Haas performed the first human hemodialysis attempts starting in 1924, abandoning the work in 1928 without durable clinical success; medical historians describe him as a genuine, often-uncredited precursor whose groundwork Kolff's later, successful 1943 device built on. Kolff, not Haas, is almost universally credited today as the source of the first clinically successful artificial kidney (see this fact's dissent). Patent or First-Use Date SignificanceThe first artificial kidney to achieve real, sustained clinical success, directly founding modern hemodialysis; its first full patient recovery, on 18 September 1945, is documented as the first time anyone survived uremic coma from acute kidney failure with the aid of a dialysis device. 1 FAQs
How did the dialysis machine develop after Willem Kolff built the rotating drum kidney in 1943?
Kolff kept improving the 1943 machine; his twin-coil kidney of 1955 was the first inexpensive disposable artificial kidney.
Willem Kolff created the rotating drum kidney in 1943 in Kampen, and it is regarded as the first working artificial kidney. He kept working on it for the rest of the war and successfully saved his first patient in 1945. He made a modified version of his dialysis machine in 1948. After moving to the United States in 1950 to work at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, he developed the twin-coil kidney in the 1950s and patented it in 1955 through Baxter Travenol. It was the first inexpensive disposable artificial kidney.
Connections
Associated With
In Field
Kolff's artificial kidney work is a founding case in the biomedical engineering field.
Source Kolff, Willem J. (Case Western Reserve Encyclopedia of Cleveland History)
Invented By
Kolff built the first working rotating drum kidney in 1943 in Kampen, Netherlands, with engineer Hendrik Berk.
Source Kolff, Willem J. (Case Western Reserve Encyclopedia of Cleveland History)
Sources
1. Kolff, Willem J. (Case Western Reserve Encyclopedia of Cleveland History)
Case Western Reserve Universitymain biographical entryQuote, main biographical entry
In 1943, Kolff created the 'rotating drum kidney (RDK),' which is regarded as the first working artificial kidney.
Georg Haas, physician (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia Foundationmain biography articleQuote, main biography article
Haas performed his first human hemodialysis in 1924 in Giessen, Germany... Because of lack of support by the medical community, Haas was forced to discontinue his promising work.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Year
Popular accounts crediting Willem Kolff alone with inventing dialysis usually omit German physician Georg Haas, who performed the first human hemodialysis attempts starting in 1924 in Giessen, using early anticoagulants (hirudin, later heparin from 1928) and a dialyzer of U-shaped collodion tubes in a dialysate bath. Haas lacked adequate anticoagulation and institutional support and abandoned the work in 1928 without a durable clinical success. Some medical historians describe him as "the forgotten hemodialysis pioneer" and argue Kolff's later, successful device built directly on groundwork Haas had already laid, even though Kolff, not Haas, is almost universally credited today as the source of the first clinically successful artificial kidney.
A dissenting reading, from an independent laneWikipedia contributors, Georg Haas, physician (Wikipedia), Wikimedia Foundation
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