Workgroup For The Liver

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Workgroup for the liver

Clinical Trials - Dynamic liver function testing

Personalized drug monitoring in intensive care

Experimental and translational pathophysiology

Dynamic liver function tests have become an essential prerequisite in the surgical planning process for successful visceral surgery. Our group has long-term experience with and contributed fundamentally to the clinical application of the dynamic liver maximum function capacity (LiMAx) test.

The ancient dogma "one size fits all" does no longer hold true to therapeutic drug dosing in intensive care patients. As we discover high interindividual variations in drugs half-lifes, our research is focused on the determination of optimal drug dosing to exactly meet the patient's need.

Understanding complex pathophysiological processes is crucial for optimized patients' treatment. Therefore, applying state-of-the-art research methods on various patients biomaterials enables us to thoroughly study disease mechanisms in humans.

	Researchers/ doctoral students from all disciplines are invited to contact us for ways to join our team or collaborate on certain topics.

	Contact Head: Prof. Dr. med. Martin Stockmann email: leberfunktion@charite.de martin.stockmann@charite.de

'Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought'
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (Hungarian Biochemist, 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine)

The LiMAx test
The LiMAx test is an innovative liver function test. This bedside procedure allows the detection of actual (enzymatic) liver function capicity in real time. In particular, after liver surgery the LiMAx test enables the early diagnosis of postoperative liver failure and provides useful diagnostic information for decision making in other liver related diseases. Currently the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and other university hospitals in Europe use this test in clinical routine and research projects.
See here a video footage about the strength of LiMAx test in clinical practise!

The preoperative volume-function analysis for an accurate surgical risk assessment
In patients with a critical low preoperative liver function, a volume-function analysis is indicated for exact assessment of the future liver remnant function. The preoperative decision algorithm has been described and its effectiveness has been shown by several studies (Malinowski M et al., Stockmann M et al., Jara M et al.). A worksheet to calculate the FLRF is freely available for download here (English version, deutsche Version).