Hong Kong's hospitals could be the first in the world to use a system able to save the lives of patients with liver failure by cleaning their blood with pigs' liver cells without the need for a transplant.
The US-based inventor of the out-of-body, bio-artificial device will move to the city and join local universities and hospitals to offer the treatment to patients in Asia.
After more than a decade of development work, it is now ready for the final phase of clinical trials and is expected to be on the market in 18 months, Dr Daniel Miller said.
Miller, chief executive of system developer Excorp Medical, expects the treatment to cost HK$200,000 to HK$500,000 for a patient, a tenth of the cost of a liver transplant.
The system is designed to remove potentially fatal toxins from the blood while giving the liver time to repair itself.
'The bio-artificial liver will stabilise a patient by protecting the heart, lung, brain and kidneys from the effects of the toxins circulating in the blood that the dysfunctional liver is not able to handle adequately,' Miller said.