Hemoperfusion

Hemoperfusion (British English: haemoperfusion) is a medical process used to remove toxic substances from a patients blood

Blood

Blood is a specialized bodily fluid that delivers necessary substances to the body's cells — such as nutrients and oxygen — and transports waste products away from those same cells....

. The technique involves passing large volumes of blood over an adsorbent substance. The adsorbent substance most commonly used in hemoperfusion are resins and activated carbon

Activated carbon

Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal or activated coal, is a form of carbon that has been processed to make it extremely porous and thus to have a very large surface area available for adsorption or chemical reactions....

. Hemoperfusion is an extracorporeal

Extracorporeal

An extracorporeal medical procedure is a medical procedure which is performed outside the body.-Circulatory procedures:A procedure in which blood is taken from a patient's circulation to have a process applied to it before it is returned to the circulation...

 form of treatment because the blood is pumped through a device outside the patient's body.

Its major uses include removing drug

Drug

A drug, broadly speaking, is any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function. There is no single, precise definition, as there are different meanings in drug control law, government regulations, medicine, and colloquial usage.In pharmacology, a...

s or poison

Poison

In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism...

s from the blood in emergency situations, removing waste products from the blood in patients with renal failure

Renal failure

Renal failure or kidney failure is a situation in which the kidneys fail to function adequately. It is divided into acute and chronic forms; either form may be due to a large number of other medical problems....

, and as a supportive treatment for patients before and after liver transplantation.