Artificial Liver Extends Lives
By Ashley Hinson

KCRG News
Story Created: Mar 26, 2009 at 5:19 AM CDT

Story Updated: Mar 26, 2009 at 5:19 AM CDT
BACKGROUND: Each year, more than 6,000 people undergo a liver transplant in the
United States, says the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Patients
receive donor livers either from someone with a healthy liver who has recently
died or a family member who donates part of his or her liver. The Mayo Clinic
says patients who qualify for liver transplants have failed to respond to other
medical or surgical treatment for serious problems caused by a liver disorder;
need a transplant to replace cancerous tumors of the liver or bile ducts like
hepatocellular carcinoma and cholangiocarcinmoa; or need a transplant to cure
abnormalities in metabolism that threaten long-term health. Some diseases that
damage the liver to the extent that a patient might need a transplant include
Hepatitis B and C, alcoholic liver disease, genetic high cholesterol and liver
tumors if they are confined to the liver.

For patients who might otherwise die, a liver transplant is a life-saving
operation. About 75 percent of patients survive three years or longer after a
transplant, according to the National Institutes of Health. Risks involved with
liver transplants are most serious after surgery. These include a life-long need
for immunosuppressive drugs -- which weaken the body's ability to fight off
infections -- and transplant rejection. Transplant rejection happens when the
body of a patient who has received an organ attacks that transplanted organ.
Doctors try to prevent this by "typing" the organ to identify antigens it
contains and make the new organ match the patient as closely as possible.
However, since no two people are identical, no two people have identical organs.

A DANGEROUS GAP: While 6,000 liver transplants are performed every year, 27,000
die from liver disease. This is in part because it's hard to replace the
functions of the liver without a transplant. Dialysis can provide good support
for failed kidneys, various assistive devices can sustain a failed heart, but
options like that aren't available for failed livers. "The attempt to provide
liver support has been far more challenging because most of those efforts were
largely focused on trying to replace the filtering capabilities of the liver
without replacing the synthetic functions, or the things that the liver cell
makes that are also missing in the failing liver," Robert S. Brown, Jr., M.D., a
liver disease and liver transplant specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian
Hospital/Columbia in New York, N.Y., told Ivanhoe.

A NEW SOLUTION: A new out-of-body artificial liver is addressing the problem by
essentially doing what dialysis does for kidneys. A patient's plasma passes
through the dialysis membrane in the machine. The plasma then filters through
human liver cells. "That plasma then bathes these liver cells, and the liver
cells perform their function and return purified and detoxified plasma to the
patient," Dr. Brown said.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
Research Office
(212) 305-3839

Best Wishes,
Scarlet
http://www.healthyhepper.com