Questions are being raised about the case of a 36-year-old Ontario woman who died of liver failure after she was rejected for a life-saving liver transplant after a medical review highlighted her prior alcohol use.
I just learned this last week that when someone gets a kidney transplant, doctors don’t remove the old one, they just shove it aside and patch the new one in…and honestly, that’s kind of fucking me up.
The liver is one of the most complex organs in the human body. It is responsible for a wide spectrum of toxin breakdown and chemical synthesis. The heart only needs to pump blood, though it’s uptime is very impressive. If your liver stops working you won’t die immediately but if your heart stops working your body will be starved of oxygen in mere minutes. Ultimately though what the heart does is mechanical and simple.
How come we’ve managed to make artificial heart but not artificial kidney or liver?
Pump make blood go weee
Liver and kidneys have to filter and sort various chemicals to keep them from poisoning your body.
Also, dialysis is a thing, it’s just generally external cause of the complexity.
Artificial kidneys are in the test phases. Not sure when they’ll enter trials but it’s very complicated.
I just learned this last week that when someone gets a kidney transplant, doctors don’t remove the old one, they just shove it aside and patch the new one in…and honestly, that’s kind of fucking me up.
The liver is one of the most complex organs in the human body. It is responsible for a wide spectrum of toxin breakdown and chemical synthesis. The heart only needs to pump blood, though it’s uptime is very impressive. If your liver stops working you won’t die immediately but if your heart stops working your body will be starved of oxygen in mere minutes. Ultimately though what the heart does is mechanical and simple.