Apheresis treatment

What is H.E.L.P. apheresis 

Apheresis and therapeutic apheresis

Apheresis essentially means a separation of plasma from the rest of the blood. Therapeutic apheresis is an extracorporeal treatment capable of removing pathogenic blood components from patients that cause morbidity.

H.E.L.P. LDL apheresis

The H.E.L.P procedure (heparin-induced extracorporeal LDL precipitation) was developed as a lipoprotein apheresis procedure capable to reduce lipoproteins, fibrinogen, adhesion molecules and others and thereby improve endothelial function, rheology and other pathophysiologic processes involved in progression of atherosclerosis. The abbreviation H.E.L.P. stands for

Heparin-induced
Extracorporal
LDL
Precipitation

In the H.E.L.P. procedure the plasma is separated from the blood cells and then sophistically processed by using heparin as additive. The selectively treated, purified plasma is then remixed with the remaining blood constituents and supplied back to the patient. During H.E.L.P. apheresis, these four steps (blood feeding, plasma separation, plasma processing and restoration of the purified blood) are performed by a single device, the Plasmat^® Futura.