<総説>人工臓器の現況と未来

概要

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Organ replacement is one radical therapy to cure desperate patients by replacing the intractable organs with living tissues or artificial machine. If the transplanted donor's organs continue to survive in the body of the recipient, the organ functions are complete and the QQL of the patient is much better conpared with a patient of artificial organ replacemant. However, some problems exist with organ transplantation in obtaining donors' organs early enough, and in the shortge of donors. On the other hand, if the artificial organs are constructed, of satisfactory size and with complete functions, they can be used in anybody, at anytime and anywhere, when the patients want to use them. However, at the present state, it is difficult to construct the artificial organs conpletely because of technical problems. In future, various kinds of high technologies, such as molecular design of biomaterial, micromachine with miniaturized sensor・actuator・processor, highly efficient and small sized energy conversion system, tissue engineering and genetic engineering etc., will be applied in the fields of artificial organs, and implantable artificial organs with complete function will be constructed and be comparable with organ transplantation in the middle of the 2lst Century. In this paper, the details of artificial kidney, artificial liver, and artificial heart are discussed
1998-03-30