摘要The last two decades of the twentieth century have witnessed increasingly successful rates of liver transplantation. The number of liver transplantations has increased steadily while the number of organ donors has remained relatively constant. Thus a great disparity has developed between the demand and supply of donor organs and remains a major limiting factor for further expansion of liver transplantation. Although many procedures, such as split liver[1] , living-related transplantation[2] , and xenotransplantation[3], have been attempted clinically to overcome the shortage, it is hoped that livers harvested from non-heart-beating donors (NHBDs) would alleviatethe problem of organ shortage, which again becomes the focus of attention[4-9]. However, sensitivity of the liver to warm ischemia remains a major worry for use of theNHBDs. The aim of this animal study was to assess if murine liver could tolerate prolonged period of warm ischemia and to determine the optimum timing of intervention in the cadaver donor in order to preserve liver viability.