Pheonix Machines

love love love the phoenix machines! i have total trust in them,you can't take any shortcuts w/them. but they are the only machines i've ever worked on except a very brief time w/cobe machines. so my opinion may be a little one-sided! good luck!

Ditto on the "Love, love, love" them. We had Cobes prior the the Phoenix, which were fine but I feel it is like going from a "Yugo" to a "Cadillac". The Phoenix has some very nice features.

It seems like we have not totally explored the machine, some flaws emerged like mushroom on stormy weather...i'm not saying anything in detail...in fairness to the maker of this Phoenix M. I work with pediatric hemodialysis patients, my co-workers agree that it is not effective enough for our little clients. It alarms if we use the Hg100 dialyzer. One thing that irritates us also is the frequent air in blood ( no matter how careful we prime the machine), it is hard to resolve, unlike in Cobe (old model); we have to draw out blood from the port to reset it, the technique they told us to do does not work...

I hope the company had updated it and the problems mentioned have been taken into account. We told the company about the problems we encountered.

We got the Gambro Phoenix Machines in December. It did take a little while to get used to them. We had old Cobe machines before. The Phoenix machines have much better features. I agree with the poster above about how you can't take any shortcuts. With some things, if you do one step wrong, it can be a little annoying to deal with. We don't really have any issues when the patient is connected though. Our patients say they like them better as well.

Did you all know that the FDA has placed an import hold (read stop sellling /importing) on ALL Gambro machine, including the Prisma, the PrismaFlex and the Phoenix? This tems from the fact that (see Nephrology News and Issues, April 2006,) they knew the scales on rhe acute machine were taking off more fluid than programmed and people died as a result...they never notified the FDA. So they are stopped. Dead...in the water. Hope none of you needs any machines anytime soon. DaVita just sued them for breach of contract because they cannot get any new machnes into the US.

My understanding is that this comes from the Prisma. The FDA put a hold on their shipments because of the possibility of the Prisma machine taking off more fluid than programmed. There were deaths linked to this problem. We were inserviced by Gambro at my facility. The problem is that when you get the incorrect weight change detected alarm, the problem has to be resolved before pressing continue. Most people just keep pressing continue instead of troubleshooting. The prisma doesn't tell you if you have fixed the cause of the alarm. It just lets you press continue and it will alarm again later. (after it has unnecessarily taken some fluid off!)

We ordered seven Phoenix machines in December. We are still supposed to receive an eighth machine but haven't because of the hold.

I wasn't aware of any lawsuits about this. That's interesting....

Davita didn't sue them . Also the import ban is a technicality the machines work great all other companies may come under the same scrutiny. Look at Baxter they had to pull all of theirs from the market. Our staff has the Phoenix in dialysis and love them. The staff said that it provides alot more information. i don't know of any company that hasn't had any issues.