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Chapter category: Tissue Engineering

Liver Support System Development

This chapter appears in the following book:

Support of the Acutely Failing Liver
Second Edition

Edited by: Achilles A. Demetriou
ISBN: 1-57059-585-2
» Get more information about this book at landesbioscience.com «

Chapter authors:
Jacek Rozga, Kyung.S. Suh, Helene Lilja, Walid S. Arnaout, Achilles A. Demetriou

For many years it has been assumed that the majority of toxins which cause coma in hepatic failure are small dialyzable molecules. As a result, most liver support systems and therapeutic regimens relied primarily on blood detoxification. However, the pathogenesis of acute liver failure is complex and many investigators, including ourselves, have argued that isolated viable hepatocytes should be used to construct a liver support system to provide not only detoxification, but also missing liver synthetic functions. This suggests that a clear distinction should be made between systems designed to strictly "purify" patient blood from toxins and devices incorporating liver tissue preparations to carry out detoxification and provide synthetic function. The former are based on the artificial kidney principle; a classic example is hemodialysis, which was first applied by Kiley et al, and hemoperfusion, which was first tried by Schechter et al using cationic resins and several years later by Yatzidis and Chang et al using activated charcoal.1-4 The latter include biological components (isolated hepatocytes, liver tissue slices) and are thus truly "bioartificial". In our opinion, the prefix "hybrid" should be used when both living, e.g., isolated hepatocytes and mechanical, e.g., adsorptive column, parts are used in combination to design a liver support system.

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Additional chapters from this book:

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Liver Support System Development

Jacek Rozga, Kyung.S. Suh, Helene Lilja, Walid S. Arnaout, Achilles A. Demetriou

For many years it has been assumed that the majority of toxins which cause coma in hepatic failure are small dialyzable molecules. As a result, most liver support systems and therapeutic regim...

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Fulminant hepatic failure (FHF) continues to be one of the most devastating conditions affecting thousands of individuals each year. By definition, these are patients who were previously he...

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Hepatic encephalopathy is a neuropsychiatric syndrome that refers to potentially reversible derangement of thought and behavior which accompany liver disease.1 Although there may be...

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The United Nations has recommended standardized dating using BCE, for 'before the common era', instead of BC and CE, for 'common era', instead of AD.

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