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Updated: Aug 20, 2026
Porcine Liver Transplantation Without Veno-Venous Bypass As an Extended Criteria Donor Model
Published on: August 17, 2022
Intraoperative blood lactate level as an early predictor of initial graft function in human living donor liver
A Nishimura1, K Hakamada, S Narumi
1Second Department of Surgery, Hirosaki University School of Medicine, Hirosaki, Aomori, Japan. h01gm503@cc.hirosaki-u.ac.jp
Unlabelled:
This study was performed to investigate whether intraoperative changes in blood lactate levels after hepatic allograft reperfusion reflect initial graft function in living donor liver transplantation (LDLT).
Patients And Methods:
From 1994 to 2003, 15 of LDLT cases were divided into two groups based on the intraoperative blood lactate levels. Group A consisted of seven recipients whose new liver grafts started to consume lactate immediately after portal perfusion. Group B consisted of the remaining eight recipients whose intraoperative blood lactate values showed no change or an elevation for 2 hours after graft revascularization.
Results:
All Group A patients survived, whereas three out of eight patients in Group B died of infection and portal vein thrombosis within 3 months after LDLT. There was no significant difference in preoperative donor and recipient laboratory data. The recipient age and body size in Group B were significantly higher than those in Group A, indicating that Group B consisted of small-for-size liver transplant cases. Serum total bilirubin concentrations in Group B were significantly higher than Group A from postoperative day 5 to 23, whereas postoperative liver enzyme levels and prothrombin time were similar between the two groups.
Conclusion:
The change in intraoperative blood lactate after hepatic allograft reperfusion served as an accurate predictor of initial graft function which was associated with graft size in human LDLT.
