I NTENSIVE DET0XtCATIVE Tf)ER4PY BY XENOHEPaT0CY-gS N.P,Subbota nteneive detoxicative "cellular therapy" requires functioning bank of allooels with preserved organ-specific properties. We showed that donor albo-and xefohepatocytea•,.oryopreeerved by routine technologies, by suprartpid freezing, maintain a high level of viable Celle ‚in suspension, thus providing for an active capture of xenobiotics. application of supralow (-196°C) temperatures guarantees a long-term (10 years or more) maintenanoe of detoxioative properties of oryopreserved cells, making control over the compo-'sition of preserved medium, sterility and biosorbent viability. unnecessary. Experimental studies using. hopstocytfls. of rats, ,dogs, puppies, pigs and humans, and olinioal eaperience on detoxieative therapy by donor ."altocryooeile" make it possible to recommend tspplication of hepatooyte suspension, in an "ertificial liver" device or transport perfusion systems• depending on the level of viable cello in suspensions: low-viability cells may be used only under indirect cell/blood contact (e.g.eatracor= poral dialysis), thus excluding penetration of cell elements into organism during cell lysis. Reliability of maintaining organ-specific properties of.cells in oryobanks provides for a timely treatment by effective natural biosorbents during intensive detoaicative therapy.institute. for Problems of Cryobiology & Cryomedicine, Ukrainian mcad.Sci.,

Unwarranted long delays in treating asthmatic patients requiring assisted mechanical ventilation (AMV) could be associated with higher death rates. The objective of the study was to identify which were the best predictive characteristics of patients with acute severe asthma (ASA) who required AMV. For this purpose, we reviewed retrospectively the hospital record of every patient with ASA admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) from 1981 to 1991 (38 with AMV and 38 without AMV). Twenty-seven variables were obtained from the history, physical examination, laboratory tests, blood gases and treatment. Using a multivariate discriminant analysis, the most powerful predictor of patients needing AMV was a function that consisted of eight variables: arterial pH, number of previous admissions to ICU, asthma severity, time elapsed since last visiting a physician, respiratory rate, age, systolic pressure and heart rate. With this function, 33 of 38 mechanically ventilated patients were well classified (sensitivity: 0.89) and the overall accuracy of the test was 92% (70 out of 76 cases). The positive and negative predictive values of the function for mechanical ventilation were 0.96 and 0.90, respectively. We conclude that the application of the calculated final discriminant function could be appropriate to decide which patients with ASA require AMV.