Peritonitis rates in CAPD patients remain unacceptably high, causing medical problems, incurring higher treatment costs, and preventing the modality from growing according to its full potential, particularly among groups of patients considered to be high-risk for CAPD. It is, therefore, evident that there is great medical need and commercial opportunity for improvements in connectology for CAPD, and for peritoneal dialysis in general. This Phase II Program is intended to evaluate the effectiveness of a new technique for disinfecting the intraluminal space within a pair of plastic CAPD connectors that are connected and disconnected by peritoneal dialysis patients during their solution exchange process. Microwave technology is used to heat the temperature of solution contained within a mated pair of CAPD connectors. This moist-heat process, in turn, has been shown to disinfect the inner lumen of the connectors. Design optimization of the connectology is planned for this program to assure best performance of the microwave heating technique. With this design optimization sterilization of the CAPD connectors may be possible. Patient trials will be conducted to determine the effectiveness of the intraluminal disinfection technique. Daily operation of the device during the patient trials will be monitored by an internal microcontroller.
