The world wide acceptance of haemodialysis as a long term means of achieving survival for patients with end stage renal failure may have obscured the inherent danger of this technique to the patient. It is a potentially lethal process where the total blood volume is recirculated extracorporeally 10 to 30 times in a period of 4 to 8 hours, 2 to 3 times per week for an indefinite number of years. The technique evolved rapidly from the intensive care unit with continuous nurse/doctor observation of the patient in 1960 (1), to the patient’s own home, where unattended overnight haemodialysis was first performed in 1964 with a passive flow system and without the use of a blood pump (2). The universal preference for the arteriovenous (A-V) fistula (3) and its implied use of a blood pump, together with the requirement that the patient accepts more responsibility for his own treatment (4), and the more recent development of short hour dialysis schedules with or without large surface area dialysers (5) have placed an even greater emphasis on the need for adequate equipment and monitoring.