PRODUCTION OF EXPERIMENTAL PORTAL HYPERTENSION IN THE DOG: Anatomy of the Hepatic Veins in the Dog

VENOUS congestion of the liver by constriction of the posterior vena cava anterior to the kidneys has been produced by others. 1 Death generally follows five to ten hours after the complete ligation of the cava just above the renal veins. 2 If the animal survives, such a procedure results in congestion not only of the hepatic and portal systems but also of the systemic regions drained by the cava caudad to the obstruction, particularly the kidney. The present work was undertaken with the object of producing hepatic congestion and accompanying portal hypertension in the dog, without the associated congestion of the systemic system. When the experiments were undertaken, a number of difficulties in the attainment of this objective became apparent. These arose from the fact that in the dog no satisfactory description of the anatomic relationships of the hepatic veins and of their relation to the posterior vena cava