MAGNITUDE OF THE PROBLEM:

		With more than 200,000 people in the United States on chronic hemodialysis, and a cost of approximately $10,000 per repair, graft  replacement alone is a $1 billion problem, almost entirely covered by Medicare.

On the human side, most hemodialysis patients are old and frail and one-third have diabetes mellitus. Each graft failure is traumatic. Successive failures can rapidly destroy a patient's already fragile vasculature.

THE ROLE OF IN-GRAFT VELOCIMETRY:

The InGraft Velocimeter is an instrument which allow the nephrologist to detect blood vessel narrowing during a regular dialysis session -with the patient at the dialysis station - in time to treat it on an outpatient, electively scheduled basis. Obviously this is a convenience for all concerned.

		More importantly, it has been shown that timely treatment by declotting, angioplasty or stenting can assure adequate dialysis and extend the life of the graft significantly, reducing overall costs and improving the patient¹s quality of life.