Issue |
J Extra Corpor Technol
Volume 43, Number 4, December 2011
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 195 - 206 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/ject/201143195 | |
Published online | 15 December 2011 |
Review Article
Extracorporeal Bioartificial Liver for Treating Acute Liver Diseases
Address correspondence to: Ashok Kumar, PhD, Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, 208016-Kanpur, India. E-mail: ashokkum@iitk.ac.in
Received:
26
February
2010
Accepted:
18
November
2011
Liver is a vital organ of the human body performing myriad of essential functions. Liver-related ailments are often life-threatening and dramatically deteriorate the quality of life of patients. Management of acute liver diseases requires adequate support of various hepatic functions. Thus far, liver transplantation has been proven as the only effective solution for acute liver diseases. However, broader application of liver transplantation is limited by demand for lifelong immunosuppression, shortage of organ donors, relative high morbidity, and high cost. Therefore, research has been focused on attempting to develop alternative support systems to treat liver diseases. Earlier attempts have been made to use nonbiological therapies based on the use of conventional detoxification procedures such as filtration and dialysis. However, the absence of liver cells in such techniques reduced the overall survival rate of the patients and led to inadequate essential liver-specific functions. As a result, there has been growing interest in the development of biological therapy-based extracorporeal liver support systems as a bridge to liver transplantation or to support the ailing liver. A bioartificial liver support is an extracorporeal device through which plasma is circulated over living and functionally active hepatocytes packed in a bioreactor with the aim to aid the diseased liver until it regenerates or until a suitable graft for transplantation is available. This review article gives a brief overview of efficacy of various liver support systems that are currently available. Also, the development of advanced liver support systems, which has been analyzed for improving the important system component such as cell source and other culture and circulation conditions for the maintenance of the liver-specific functions, have been described.
Key words: liver failure / hepatocytes / liver support devices / bioartificial liver / bioreactor
© 2011 AMSECT
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.