The invention refers to a dialysis machine for extracorporeal blood treatment, namely for the removal of contaminants from blood, and in particular to a dialysis machine comprising a servicing event indicator.
Dialysis machines include a complex system for the purification of blood taken from a patient's body. The dialysis machine comprises a blood circuit and a dialysate circuit respectively passing through different chambers of a dialysis machine in which the contaminants are removed from the blood. The dialysis machine includes liquid conveying systems with numerous pumps for feeding the dialysate and the blood, as well as for preparing the dialysate from various liquids and for maintaining temperature. Further, a complex control and monitoring system with numerous sensors and operating components is provided. For example, the sensors include conductivity sensors, pressure gauges, temperature sensors and the like. The operating components mainly comprise pumps and valves.
Since failure of a dialysis machine could become fatal for a patient connected thereto, each machine must be maintained on a regular basis following specific regulations. Such preventive servicing event may be prescribed by authorities. Moreover, the individual manufacturers have their own servicing event regulations. Servicing event regulations generally provide servicing intervals in the form of specific fixed periods of time. Most common is a servicing event on an annual or biennial basis. For economic reasons, however, increasingly longer servicing intervals are demanded. Yet, too long a servicing interval may incur a risk of device failure during the treatment and thus may also cause high costs due to patients' complaints and unscheduled equipment downtime.
EP 1 331 589 A2 describes a medical apparatus that is adapted to detect the onset of problems and to transmit notification of such to servicing event personnel via a remote transmission system so as to inform the personnel of a needed repair. Here, the repair happens only after a trouble has been detected, which in the case of dialysis machines is oftentimes too late.