R ussian Pioneers of Therapeutic Hemapheresis and Extracorporeal Hemocorrection: 100‐ Y ear A nniversary of the W orld's F irst S uccessful P lasmapheresis

On 15 F ebruary 2013 (2 F ebruary on the J ulian C alendar) we celebrated the 100‐year anniversary of the world's first successful experimental plasmapheresis. Scientific research projects in this field were carried out by the D epartment of I nfectious D isease, R ussian I mperial M edical S urgical A cademy located in S aint‐ P etersburg. D octor of M edical S ciences and P rofessor V adim A . Y urevich was a P rincipal I nvestigator for this research, which in 1913 resulted in the discovery of a new way of treatment. The results were published in R usski V ratch ( R ussian P hysician) J ournal no. 18 (1914) – V . A . Y urevich and N . K . R osenberg “For the Question Regarding Washing of Blood Outside of the Body and the Vitality of Red Blood Cells”. There was no terminology offered for this medical innovation at that time. Plasma removal was performed not solely, but in combination with washing of blood cells returned to the patient. Nowadays this combination is still considered to be more effective than separate plasmapheresis. According to the published experimental protocols this new treatment was done on 15 F ebruary (2 F ebruary on the J ulian C alendar or “old style”). One year later in 1914 a famous researcher, J ohn A bel and coauthors, repeated a separate plasma removal treatment with retransfusion of the blood cells and suggested the term “plasmapheresis”, which is now official. The article entitled “Plasma Removal With Return of Corpuscles (Plasmapheresis)”, written by A bel was published 3 months later than the article by Professor Y urevich. In 1924, Dr I van P . M ikhailovskiy repeated experiments by Yurevich and Rosenberg in vivo on a dog model, confirmed the clinical efficiency and developed the methodology in his article “Washing of Blood In Vivo, the Methodology, Problems, and Importance for the Treatment of Toxic Conditions.”