
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 18, 1993                   TAG: 9305180090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Short

IN FIRST, ARTIFICIAL LIVER USED DURING TRANSPLANT

For the first time, doctors have used an artificial liver to keep a person alive after removing the patient's own failing liver, a surgeon said Monday.

The "bioartificial liver," which contains pig liver cells, helped an 18-year-old Southern California woman survive without her own liver for 14 hours until she underwent transplant surgery and received a donated human liver, said Dr. Achilles Demetriou of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

He said the woman was the third patient in which the artificial organ was used to prevent death until a transplantable donor liver could be found. But in both previous cases, the patients also kept their own malfunctioning livers until transplant surgery. - Associated Press

by CNB