HEPATIC ARTERIAL VARIATIONS AND LIVER-RELATED DISEASES OF 100 CONSECUTIVE DONORS

We prospectively studied anatomical variations and diseases of the liv er in 100 consecutive donor operations during a period of 1 year. The ''normal'' arterial anatomy with a single hepatic artery (HA) from the celiac trunk was seen in 76 % of all cases. Seven of twelve different major variations of the HA may be considered as ''rare'', one of whic h cannot be found in the earlier literature. During harvesting, 6 % of the livers were discarded, 3 % on the basis of infection and 1 % beca use of a polycystic disease. Two cases were rejected as the liver was found to be severely hypoperfused or hypoxic in an otherwise stable do nor. Severe steatosis was macroscopically and histologically diagnosed in 3 % of the cases, and in three donors a benign tumour was found in the liver or in the gall bladder. Two primarily nonfunctioning livers in the present series of 94 recipient operations were retrieved from this group of severely steatotic livers. As the donor liver was totall y ''normal'' in only 2 out of 3 of the cases, the present study underl ines the importance of searching for extremely variable anomalies of t he HA and for liver-related diseases during organ harvesting.