Washington ? There’s help for failing kidneys and failing hearts. But there’s no fix for a dying liver.

Doctors are trying to change that at a few hospitals around the country, testing a machine packed with human liver cells as a last-ditch chance to survive sudden liver failure.

The experiment is the latest in a decades-long quest for an artificial liver, a device that could temporarily take over some of the liver’s jobs much like dialysis helps kidneys work and cardiac pumps squeeze a flabby heart.

Unlike those organs, a damaged liver sometimes regenerates if it has enough recovery time. If it’s too far gone, a transplant is the only option — but a dying liver starts a fast chain reaction where kidneys shut down, bleeding begins and patients fall into a coma, often too sick to try a transplant even if an organ could be found soon enough.

The goal: To help such patients stabilize enough for a transplant, or even to avoid one. “It doesn’t replace a liver,” cautions Dr. Todd Frederick of California Pacific Medical Center.

But, “if we could buy some time while the liver is recovering, that potentially would be a great advance,” says Dr. Lena Napolitano of the University of Michigan, who like Frederick is helping test the ELAD, or “extracorporeal liver assist device.”