1 research outputs found
Morphometric characterization of the human portal and hepatic venous trees: A quantitative support to the liver micro-anatomic models free of subunits
Conventional models of liver microanatomy
assume the presence of subunits. Nevertheless, some
researchers propose that the liver is a continuous
structure, free of these subunits, but with a characteristic
vascular pattern. The present study describes a
morphometric analysis of portal and hepatic veins in 50
human autopsy non-pathological liver samples.
The main objective was to measure three
proportions: 1. portal tracts / hepatic veins, 2.
distributing portal veins / distributing hepatic veins and
3. terminal portal veins / terminal hepatic veins. These
ratios were compared with the traditional
microcirculatory liver models.
Our material comprised 3,665 portal veins and 3,761
hepatic veins. The minimum diameter of half of the
venous vessels of both types belongs to the interval (25
μm , 60 μm), given that 1881 portal veins (49.434%) and
1924 hepatic veins (50.565%) fall within this interval.
We have statistically shown with the χ2 test (α=0.990)
that the portal and hepatic veins belonging to the interval
(25 μm, 400 μm) (distributing veins) had an identical
proportion.
If the portal and hepatic veins are arranged
according to the principle of interdigitation of Takashasi
(1970), there should be an almost identical number of
both types of veins. Our results contradict the
presumably numeric preponderance of distributing portal
veins with regard to the distributing hepatic veins that is
inherent in the models of Kiernan, Matsumoto and
Rappaport