Plasma versus Whole Blood Perfusion in
a Bioartificial Liver Assist Device

ASAIO Journal 2002
By John F. Patzer II, Brian Campbell, and Richard Miller

The ramifications of using whole blood or plasma for perfusion of an hepatocyte containing bioartificial liver bioreactor in which the hepatocytes are separated by a membrane or other physical barrier from the perfusate stream on the rate of change of patient blood concentrations are explored through dynamic modeling of whole blood perfusion as a two compartment system (patient tissue and blood compartments), and plasma perfusion as a three compartment system (patient tissue and blood compartments, and a plasma reservoir). The whole blood perfusion model is described by three dimensionless parameters: the Damkohler number, Da, which represents the ratio of the rate of conversion by the bioreactor to the rate of perfusion; kappa, which represents the ratio of the rate of internal reequilibration between the tissue and blood compartments and the rate of perfusion; and Vtb, the tissue/blood volume ratio. The plasma perfusion model has three additional dimensionless parameters: f, the fraction of plasma withdrawn from the blood in a plasma separator; alpha, the ratio of the plasma perfusion rate in the bioreactor to the blood draw rate; and Vbr, the blood/plasma reservoir volume ratio. Within the physiologic range of parameters, the rate of reduction in blood concentration in both the whole blood-perfused and plasma-perfused systems are sensitive to Damkohler number up to Da ~ 2. Neither system is sensitive to variations in kappa, and the plasma perfusion system has little sensitivity to alpha. Given bioreactors of equivalent activity, a greater rate of blood concentration reduction and lower endpoint blood concentration at equivalent perfusion times will be achieved with whole blood perfusion. There are two physical reasons for this. The first is that the plasma perfused system is only processing a fraction, f, of the blood compared with the whole blood perfusion system. The second reason is that, although the blood-perfused system is limited by overall bioreactor performance, the plasma-perfused system is mass transfer limited to the rate of blood concentration dilution into the plasma reservoir rather than limited by the overall bioreactor performance. ASAIO Journal 2002; 48:226-233.