Tolerance of the cirrhotic liver to normothermic ischemia. A clinical study of 15 patients.

Temporary occlusion of hepatic inflow, namely, the Pringle maneuver, was adopted for 15 patients with liver cirrhosis who underwent partial hepatectomy. The warm ischemia time ranged from 2 to 32 minutes with an average of 19 minutes. The procedure did not cause any harmful effects on systemic hemodynamic and postoperative liver function. The results in our patients were compared with those of 15 comparable control patients who had been operated on over the same period of time without inflow obstruction. The Pringle maneuver significantly diminished the estimated blood loss during surgery, intraoperative and postoperative complications, and suppressed the operative mortality rate from 20 percent to 0.