The sorbent suspension reciprocating dialyzer: A wearable artificial kidney that almost was

In this History article, I describe our laboratory’s effort from 1975 to 1983 to develop a very simple, truly wearable artificial kidney. The design was radical and yet simple. Reciprocating plate dialyzer membranes pumped blood in and out of a single blood access point and also mixed a sorbent suspension outside the membranes. A problem with sorbent solubility and termination of corporate funding due to circumstances beyond our control ended the project. With some changes, the main concept was utilized in a later project, the BioLogic‐DT™ “liver dialysis” machine.