Heterotopic liver transplantation utilizing inbred rat strains. I. Characterization of allogeneic graft rejection and the effects of biliary obstruction and portal vein circulation on liver regeneration

A half century (1961-2011) of applying microsurgery to experimental liver research

“…The intestinal persistence of mast cell hyperplasia after compensatory hepatic growth could be associated with a late splanchnic remodeling process [42,43] . The 70% hepatectomy is also involved in heterotrophic liver transplantation in the rat, which in turn serves to study the host interliver competition phenomenon [44,45] .…”

Heterotopic Liver Transplantation

“…With most techniques described for auxiliary liver transplantation the graft is inserted far distant from the recipient's own liver [1,5,6,20,23,27], or a long segment of the infrahepatic vena cava is used as an outflow vessel [19]. With increasing distance from the right atrium, however, the pressure in the systemic venous circulation increases.…”

The Need to Handicap the Recipient′s Native Liverin the Rat Model of Heterotopic Auxiliary LiverTransplantation

“…HALTx in the rat has long been used for experimental research, since it was first described by Lee and Edgington in 1966 [6]. The investigators have used this model to study amongst others, liver regeneration, hepatotrophic factors, allogenic microchimerism and graft rejection [5,7,8]. Several technique modifications of this model have been introduced [9][10][11][12].…”

“…Although the observation of graft atrophy and the concept of "inter-liver competition" in HALTx were reported in the early 60's [13][14][15], opinion still varies on whether in this rat model the native liver of the recipient should be handicapped and in this case which approach should be used. Some authors handicapped the native liver either with a 68% partial hepatectomy (68% PH) [7,10] or a 68% PH plus a common bile duct ligation (CBDL) [9,11]. Others, on the contrary, left the native liver intact [5,8,12].…”