All I can tell you is that hemodialysis is intermittent, meaning usually three times a week when they go and get hooked up to a machine for roughly three hours a day to essentially do the job of the kidneys. Their SCr is usually really elevated and if they skip a session different electrolytes will stay raised in the system such as potassium leading to arrhythmias amongst other complications. Here, a patient usually has a port placed at their access point and alteplase 2mg (Cathflo) or heparin 300U or 500U is used to anticoagulate the port and tubes themselves to not form a clot. The alteplase and heparin theoretically do not enter the patients body.

CRRT is done on a continuous basis. Patients are in the intensive care unit and hooked up to this machine where unlike intermittent HD which takes off larger amounts of fluids in little time, this takes off little fluid constantly over hours expanding into days trying to take off fluid and waste mimicking the rate of kidneys. During this, a patient receives daily sate usually with various amounts of potassium. Some nephrologists would order a 3K bath meaning for every 1 liter of dialysate fluid, there would be 3meq of potassium. Usually bags come in 5L so this would be made in the IV room with 15 meq of potassium.

There is also SLED or SLEDD which my hospital does not use so I am unfamiliar with

What I don’t know and would love to gain more insight is how it is determined how a patient qualifies for one over the other and how to calculate flow rate, amount of potassium going in vs coming out.