Word: livers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Shortly after an English couple finished a hearty breakfast in Guernsey last month, both went into comas; the fried mushrooms they had eaten were of the poisonous variety known as death cup. Flown to King's College Hospital in London, they were rushed to a section called the liver research unit, where the husband came out of his coma. But the wife's condition worsened, and doctors decided to connect her circulatory system to the only artificial "liver machine" in the world. Four days later, after being close to death from acute liver poisoning, she regained consciousness...
...remarkable machine, designed by Dr. Roger Williams, 42, has also saved two other patients in deep comas from liver poisoning. The first was a 21-year-old female office worker who suffered a violent reaction to the anesthetic halothane. The second was a 26-year-old mechanic being treated with Pyrimide, a drug used to combat tuberculosis. Each was given four hours a day on the machine; each regained consciousness after four days and is now recovering. Thus in its first few weeks of operation, Williams' machine has already raised hopes that a reliable treatment may soon be available...
...Baboon. The traditional treatment for acute liver failure has included such cumbersome techniques as replacing the patient's entire blood supply by transfusion, or filtering the blood through the liver of a pig or baboon. These procedures are designed to relieve the liver of the task of cleansing the blood, giving the organ an opportunity to regenerate itself. But all of them are unreliable, and even when a patient gets well, there is often doubt that his recovery has been significantly aided by the treatment...
Williams set out to develop a more reliable way of simulating the liver's filtering ability in 1966, when he founded the liver research unit at King's College with one assistant. Backed by private and government grants-and aided by a staff that has now expanded to 44 -he devised a series of 2-ft.-high glass columns through which the patient's blood is detoured. The columns are filled with charcoal granules, which filter water-soluble impurities from the blood; additional columns filled with resins are being tested to remove less soluble protein-bound compounds...
...more patients, who will not be hard to come by. Many victims of viral hepatitis and of adverse reactions to anesthetics or other drugs develop hepatic coma. The condition may also be brought on by drug abuse; 1,500 persons were admitted to English hospitals in 1971 for liver poisoning caused by Paracetamol, a painkilling tablet...