The evaluation of potential donors hepatic vascular anatomy in liver transplantation with multislice CT

To assess the role of multislice CT angiography in the evaluation of arterial, hepatic and portal venous anatomy and variations in potential liver donors before transplantation. Our study consisted of total 48 healthy liver donor candidates (11 female and 37 male) who applied for liver transplantation donation between March 2010 and July 2013. Donors underwent unenhanced CT and CT angiography in arterial, portal and hepatic venous phases with a 64 detector CT scanner. Two- and three-dimensional images were obtained from 0.625-mm thick axial images with multiplanar reformatting, maximum intensity projection and volume rendering techniques. Hepatic vascular system anatomy and variants were demonstrated. Of 48 donors, 34 had normal hepatic artery anatomy; 14 patients had hepatic arterial variations. Four patients had Michels type 2 and 3 had Michels type 3. One case had Michels type 4 and 1 Michels type 5. Five patients had rare anomalies not classified by Michels (GDA arise distal to the LHA and the common hepatic artery arising directly from the aorta). Twenty-five patients had normal portal venous anatomy; twenty-three patients had variations of the portal venous system. İn 32 patients right, middle and left hepatic veins separately drained into VCI, 16 of the donors had a common trunk draining both MHV and LHV into VCI. In 12 patients, veins that drained segment V and/or VIII to the middle hepatic vein were larger than 5 mm. Fourteen patients had accessory inferior hepatik ven, 5 patients had accessory süperior hepatic veins greater than 5 mm. Multislice CT is a reliable and useful non-invaziv technique; in potential living liver donors to provide artery, portal and hepatik venous structures mapping and to determine fairly common vascular variations that may complicate surgery before transplantation. Key Words: Liver Transplantation, Multislice Computed Tomography, Hepatic Arterial Variation, Portal Venous Variation, Hepatic Venous Variation.