The University of Colorado, Oregon Health Science Center, and University of California San Francisco have become the latest centers to participate in a phase II/III clinical trial of Circe Biomedical's HepatAssist Liver Support System.
The goal of the study is to determine whether the system provides a bridge to liver regeneration/recovery or to liver transplant. HepatAssist is an extracorporeal, bioartificial system that combines the use of proprietary membrane technology and porcine liver cells.
Centers already enrolled in the trial include the Mayo Clinic, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, University of Alabama Birmingham Health Sciences Center, and University of North Carolina Hospitals and School of Medicine.
In other news, in early November, Westby Fisher, MD, at The University Hospital in Cincinnati became the first physician in the United States to implant a cardiac stimulator developed specifically for the treatment of heart failure. The InSync Cardiac Resynchronization Device, manufactured by Medtronic, Inc., is designed to synchronize the right and left sides of the heart, and the upper and lower chambers. "We hope that patients with the device will experience relief of their heart failure symptoms and may be able to avoid receiving a heart transplant," said William Abraham, MD, the U.S. principal investigator of the multicenter trial. "Heart transplant remains the gold standard for advanced heart failure patients, but ... many elderly patients ... are not good candidates for heart transplant surgery."
Please be aware that medical advice, diagnoses and physician references cannot be obtained from this site.