PREDICTING THE DONOR LIVER LOBE WEIGHT FROM BODY-WEIGHT FOR SPLIT-LIVER TRANSPLANTATION

It is possible to obtain two good-quality hepatic transplants from a s ingle cadaveric liver by separation of the right and left lobes of the liver. We attempted to define a relationship based only on donor body weight for predicting donor total liver weight as well as donor right (segments V-Vm) and left (segments II-TV) hepatic lobe weight. Segment I (caudate lobe) is resected and thus lost in this procedure. The stu dy was performed on 60 human cadaveric livers. We correlated cadaveric body weight (mean +/- SD), 72.43 +/- 9.54 kg, with total liver weight , 1.54 +/- 0.36 kg, and right and left lobe weight, 0.88 +/- 0.23 kg a nd 0.65 +/- 0.17 kg, respectively, with total liver weight. A formula was obtained by linear regression which provided the following relatio nships: total liver weight (g) = [245.57 +/- 17.92 x (body weight, kg) ]; right lobe weight (g) = [67.58 + 0.52 x (total liver weight, g)]; l eft lobe weight (g) = [-63.38 + 0.47 x (total liver weight, g)]. The s election of the recipient on the liver transplant waiting list can be made on the basis of these relationships.