Three decades of research into the host defenses of the human organism has produced an impressive and increasingly comprehensive understanding of the inflammatory response.
Sepsis remains a major cause of potentially preventable mortality.
The stakes are high. In retrospect, it is highly unlikely that an intervention modulating one or two steps of a highly redundant system can achieve dramatic results. Therapeutic apheresis is a collective term for a variety of in vivo medical techniques that separate plasma or a cellular component from blood or other body fluids such as thoracic duct lymph. The separated element or elements may be discarded or may be treated and used to correct a pathologic condition. A broad definition of therapeutic apheresis can be extended to include hemodialysis and various modes of hemofiltration.