Surgical anatomy of the hepatic arteries: a prelude to living donor liver transplantation

In the setting of Liver Transplantation as a new and emerging specialty in Pakistan the need has arisen for exact descriptions of the hepatic vascularization to avoid iatrogenic vascular damage. Exact knowledge of the arterial anatomy is required to plan the best resection as well as to minimize the risks of donor morbidity. We studied variations of extrahepatic arterial anatomy in forty six patients who underwent major hepatobiliary or pancreatic resections with complete exposure and/or skeletonization of the extrahepatic arterial anatomy. The extrahepatic arterial anatomy in twelve cadaveric dissections was also studied. The commonest arterial variant seen in our series was Type 1 i.e. 91.37% . The prevalence of anatomical variants was 8.63% . Knowledge of the variation in the hepatic arterial anatomy will help us in planning and performing the safe procurement of grafts from living donors with less risk of serious ischemic complications