Fifty-percent partial liver transplantation in the rat

Reduced-size liver transplantation in the rat has been useful in the study of hepatic regeneration. We describe a modified technique for partial liver transplantation in the rat using a 50% reduced-size graft. Male Lewis rats (RT1(1)), weighing 250 to 280 g, were used as donors and recipients. The harvested donor liver was placed in 4 degrees C cold saline and graft reduction was performed ex situ by resecting the left lateral lobe, the left portion of the median lobe, and the caudate lobes. The reduced graft was composed of the right portion of the median lobe and the right lobe, weighing 5.33 +/- O.58 g (53.6 +/- 2.2% of the donor liver before reduction, n=7). The recipient 1-week survival rate was 85.7%. The use of reduced livers permits the study of host responses to a deficient graft. This technique provides another choice of liver volume to be implanted and allows the study of regeneration of small-for-size livers more precisely in combination with more extensive graft reduction.