Liver Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury: an Overview

The present review discusses strategies for minimizing the ischemia/reperfusion injury (IRI) experienced during liver surgery and transplantation. We present the experimental models used to study the complexity of hepatic IRI and new surgical and pharmacologic strategies for manipulating and improving liver function after liver surgery and transplantation. This would be of clinical interest to reduce the prevalence of IRI and improve patient management and outcomes. The ongoing effort to expand the pool of usable liver grafts has made it clear that a better understanding of the mechanisms of IRI and other consequences of using expanded criteria donor (ECD) liver allografts are critical to improving results with these grafts.