A practical approach to quantitate hepatic excretory function.

A statistical comparison of different BSP tests was carried out in normal subjects and in patients with various degrees of chronic liver damage. Only the logarithm of the BSP retention correlated linearly with the physiologically more meaningful determination of the maximal excretory capacity of the liver (BSP Tm, Wheele's method). A double logarithmic transformation was required to correlate the second exponential component of the BSP plasma disappearance curve (k(2)) with the BSP Tm. When the limitations of these methods are kept in mind, the observed statistical relationships can be used to express hepatic functional deterioration in more physiological terms.