The purpose of this study was to evaluate the significance of liver volumetry as a parameter for hepatic functional reserve in cirrhotic patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Liver volume was calculated from preoperative computed tomograms of 44 cirrhotic patients who underwent elective hepatic resections for hepatocellular carcinoma.The liver volume per body weight of non-alcoholic cirrhotics was significantly smaller than that of alcoholic cirrhotics (20.9 vs. 26.7 cc/kg; p=0.03). The values for alcoholic cirrhotics was comparable with normal values. The liver volume per body weight of the cirrhotic patients demonstrated correlation with the preoperative serum albumin (p<0.01) and indocyanine green clearance (p=0.02). We conclude that the determination of hepatic atrophy by volume try can serve as a parameter for the assessment of hepatic reserve but not as a predictor of postoperative complications in elective liver surgery for cirrhotic patients.
It is now possible to determine proper motions of high-velocity objects in such a way as to obtain with some accuracy the velocity vector relevant to the Sun. If a potential field of the Galaxy is assumed, one can compute an actual orbit. A determination of the velocity of the globular clusterωCentauri has recently been completed at Greenwich, and it is found that the orbit is strongly retrograde in the Galaxy. Similar calculations may be made, though with less certainty, in the case of RR Lyrae variable stars.
Using the new reductions of the IUE light curves by Sonneborn et al. (1997) and an extensive set of HST images of SN 1987A we have repeated and improved Panagia et al. (1991) analysis to obtain a better determination of the distance to the supernova. In this way we have derived an absolute size of the ringRabs= (6.23 ± 0.08) x 1017cm and an angular sizeR″ = 808 ± 17 mas, which give a distance to the supernovad(SN1987A) = 51.4 ± 1.2 kpc and a distance modulusm–M(SN1987A) = 18.55 ± 0.05. Allowing for a displacement of SN 1987A position relative to the LMC center, the distance to the barycenter of the Large Magellanic Cloud is also estimated to bed(LMC) = 52.0±1.3 kpc, which corresponds to a distance modulus ofm–M(LMC) = 18.58±0.05.