The regenerative capacity of the liver cell is almost unlimited. Therefore after acute liver damage, be it viral, toxic, hypoxic, or surgical in origin, restitutio ad integrum is the usual outcome. In two forms of liver disease, however, this is not the case: in fulmi nant hepatic failure, liver regeneration often is not fast enough to keep the organism alive; in end-stage cirrhosis, regeneration is dis turbed by a hypertrophic architecture of fibrotic tissue. For these extreme forms of liver disease and for critical situations before and after liver surgery, artificial liver support is...