Elizabeth Blaj knows what it 's like to be close to death. Elizabeth Blaj suffers from liver disease. "They didn't think I'd make it through the night." Time was running out. "They told me, you know what, maybe two days is what we have to find you a liver."
For the past ten years, Elizabeth has been dealing with problems with her liver. An infection almost took her life. Dr. Robert Brown, professor medicine and surgery. "It had already shut down my kidneys. My liver had shut down and basically I had a heart attack. That was the pain in my back. They thought I was toast that very day." That's when doctors turned to an artificial liver or ELAD to keep her alive. It works like a dialysis, cleaning toxins out of plasma. "The assumption is that it will provide temporary liver support while either their liver gets better or as a bridge to a transplant."
Before the plasma is returned, it filters through cells in the ELAD taken from a liver tumor. They help in detoxifying, blood-clotting and metabolism. "These liver cells can grow on plastic and can be easily stored and transported and they grow very, very dense." The ELAD system kept Elizabeth alive for five days -- enough time to find a donor liver. "It bought me time. It bought me time. Five days was like an eternity." And now she's living a whole new life. "I have told people it's like living in a fog and having that fog lifted."
A person's chances of dying on the waiting list for a donor liver are higher than the chances of dying on the artificial liver. Doctor Brown has kept patients on the machine for up to 10 days.
