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 single 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-VIII) and left (segments II-IV) hepatic lobe weight. Segment I (caudate lobe) is resected and thus lost in this procedure. The study 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 and 0.65 +/- 0.17 kg, respectively, with total liver weight. A formula was obtained by linear regression which provided the following relationships: 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)]; left lobe weight (g) = [-63.38 + 0.47 x (total liver weight, g)]. The selection of the recipient on the liver transplant waiting list can be made on the basis of these relationships.