Liver transplantation and artificial liver support in fulminant hepatic failure

INTRODUCTIONFulminant hepatic failure (FHF) is a severe disease withdevastating consequences;the incidence is high in China.Before the availability of liver transplantation,the mortalityrate was more than 80%.The advent of livertransplantation revolutionized the outcome of FHF.However,many patients were unwilling to accept livertransplantation until very late,hence most of them diedbecause of donor shortage and urgency of the disease.Toovercome the problems,we performed orthotopic livertransplantation (OLT) in combination with artificial liversupport (ALS) in the treatment of FHF in the past 2 yearswith satisfactory results.Our experience was reported below.