Abstract
Introduction: During waiting time to liver transplantation or time for spontanoues regeneration of liver tissue for treatment of acute liver failure (ALF) the development of eliminatory methods of biologic or non-biologic origin has been established recently. The aim of the study: Assesment of a biological eliminatory method of plasma perfusion over living hepatocytes - BAL (bioartificial liver) in acute liver failure in experiment on minipigs.
Methods: The model of acute liver failure caused by surgical liver devascularisation and portocaval by-passs was performed on 10 minipigs of 25-30 kg weight which were tretaed by BAL. Indicators of ALF and intracranial pressure (ICP) were measured.
The results were compared to control group without treatment Results: The diference was seen only in serum bilirubin level, when statistically significant difference was seen only in 3rd hour (p mensinez 0.05) favourable in a group of nontreated pigs (9.8 vs 17.7 mmol/l), in 6th and 9th hour (p mensinez 0.05) favourable for BAL group (18.1 vs 13.1, 22.9 vs 13,2 mmol/l) and the diference in 12th hour was not statistically significant (22.8 vs 16.2 mmol/l). ICP values in both groups were not statistically significant.
Conclusion: Our study proved the effectivity of eliminatory method - bioartificial liver (BAL) in plasma perfusion. 85% initial viability of fresh isolated porcine hepatocytes and their survival during the time of experiment when bioreactor was used has been established. Our results did not proved any significant changes of laboratory tests for ALF except serum bilirubin.
Also ICP was not statistically significant different in both groups. Our experience enables to follow in BAL experimental work.
Our experiment can be asessed as a pilot study.