Monitoring tissue chemistry in patients by microdialysis is likely to become routine in clinical practice Many diagnostic and therapeutic decisions in medical practice are based on measuring blood concentrations of endogenous molecules. Yet most biochemical and pharmacological events take place in the tissues. Assessing tissue chemistry should theoretically provide more accurate data, and this can now be achieved relatively cheaply and minimally invasively with microdialysis. This review describes the technique of microdialysis and its application in clinical research, drug monitoring, and drug development. It also discusses how, in the future, measurement of tissue rather than blood chemistry may become the standard for some clinical investigations. Summary points Microdialysis enables the in vivo measurement of tissue chemistry in humans and is feasible in virtually every human organ It is currently being used to monitor brain ischaemia and metabolic control The technique is set to become a standard tool in drug monitoring and development In the future “bedside” microdialysis will allow monitoring of tissue metabolism in a wide range of diseases
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Markus Müller (2002) studied this question.
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