[Hepatic protein synthesis rate as an index of hepatic functional reserve in human liver]

Hepatic protein synthesis rate (HPS) in human livers were measured to evaluate hepatic functional reserve. HPS of 34 patients who underwent operations were studied and were divided into 4 groups. Normal liver (n = 7), obstructive jaundice (n = 9), liver cirrhosis (n = 8) and other hepatic dysfunction (n = 10). HPS in normal liver was 6.9 +/- 3.0 nmol/mg wet wt./10 min. HPS in obstructive jaundice liver was 17.1 +/- 10.3, and HPS in liver cirrhosis was 47.5 +/- 17.8. There were significant differences among these three groups. HPS correlated well with cholinesterase (r = -0.6533, P less than 0.01) and ICGR15 (r = 0.7315, P less than 0.01). In 15 patients who received hepatectomy, relations between HPS and postoperative complication were studied. There were no complications in patients whose HPS were less than 20 nmol/mg wet wt./10 min. in major hepatic resection and in patient whose HPS were less than 40 in a segmentectomy. Even if HPS were elevated, the operations were safe in subsegmentectomy and partial hepatectomy. So HPS would be one of the good indices to evaluate hepatic functional reserve.