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Comment by GGfpc | Hacker News Reader

Can a person survive without a liver for 1 week?

Based on the experiences of a friend & close family member & what the doctors said: when your liver stops functioning, you will have about six weeks to live. The prognosis schedule was pretty much spot-on in both cases,and the last week has much less useful consciousness. Since the first few weeks are not really debilitating, I'd wager that one week without a liver to re-implant a repaired organ should be a good plan.

Out of curiosity: Amanita poison I thought mostly attacked the liver and leads to death in much less than 6 weeks (more like a few days, maybe a week). So I assume the 6 weeks means massive effort in the ER to stabilize the patient without liver, maybe some advanced blood filtering?

Interesting discrepancy.

Both the ones I knew were in hospice and not a huge intervention for the six weeks, so not a tone of continuing intervention.

I'd guess that liver failure is maybe defined not as 100% failure, but failure to keep up with daily demand due to an external impairment such as cancer, and that this is just a typical curve of declining function until the body becomes too poisoned to survive.

Anybody with more detailed real bio/medical information?

My medical education is congruent with your thoughts. Liver failure is defined as partial or complete loss of function. You're also right about the "too poisoned to survive" aka end-stage liver disease. People in this stage often die from too much toxin build up, infection, or bleeding. Your explanation is great.

Thanks! very helpful.

There might be necrosis of the liver involved, which adds a dump of toxins on top of non-functioning liver.

You wouldn't necessarily have to remove all of the liver. If you take say 50% of it, then the other 50% can regrow assuming a good chunk of it is still alive.

No. My brother suffered acute liver failure following a diagnostic procedure to check his brain after having brain cancer surgery. He survived two weeks. And they were a horrible two weeks.

I'm sorry for your loss. I hope no one has to go through this again with the advances in this new liver extending technology.

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