Splitting of the middle hepatic vein in full-right full-left splitting of the liver

Abstract

Full-right/full-left splitting of the liver offers a chance to overcome the severe shortage of donor organs. During this procedure, the splitting surgeons are always faced with the question of how to share the middle hepatic vein (MHV), since this vein drains parts of both halves of the liver. Consequently, we developed a procedure that splits the MHV, thus creating an MHV on both grafts. In this short article, we report on this splitting technique and our first initial experience. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.