EFFECT OF OCCLUSION OF THE ARTERIAL BLOOD SUPPLY TO THE NORMAL LIVER

Abstract

FROM the beginning of his medical training the surgeon is taught to respect the hepatic artery. Technics of operations performed in the region through which this vessel courses have as their common objective the avoidance of the normal or aberrant artery and its hepatic branches, so great is the fear of the hepatic artery and so certain and so rapid the onset of liver necrosis and coma followed by death if it or one of its branches is ligated. Fortunately, because of the surgeon's training, opportunities for study of the events following ligation which lead to death are rare in the case of man. In regard to dogs, it has been held that lack of arterial blood is but the beginning of liver damage and that an anaerobic bacillus, found by Wolbach and Saiki¹ to be present in the liver of many normal dogs and proved by many to