[Drug therapy in the eighties and the liver]

Drug therapy of liver diseases is fundamentally rather difficult, due to the elaborate function of the organ. Nevertheless there are essential aims to be achieved in the pharmacological and clinical research; drug therapy of liver disease as it is being conducted nowadays has to be ridded from dead freight in favour of compounds, whose efficacy has been proven; indications have to be defined properly. It is also to be hoped, that in the decade to come a new immunostimulatory and antiviral therapy will be developed for treatment of chronic active viral hepatitis; the problem of acute viral hepatitis might be solved through development of a polyvalent vaccine. There is also a good possibility for temporary substitution of liver function by new devices.