Hepatobiliary diseases of animals are frequently diagnosed by a combination of imaging,clinical pathology, and histopathology. A standardized surgical liver biopsy protocol,however, has not been established in veterinary medicine with regard to the selection oflobe and site of the liver to yield the most diagnostic information. To address thismatter, we histologically examined 33 livers of autopsied dogs from which tissue samplesof 4 different lobes as well as 4 different sites of each lobe were prepared. We measuredthe hepatic lobular diameter (HLD) as an objective variable to refer to the inter-lobar orinter-site difference among the biopsied samples. A measurement of 2,623 hepatic lobulesresulted in 1.042 mm as the average of all the HLD values. Statistical analysis furtherrevealed that the HLD tended to be small in a superficial 2 mm area of the liverparenchyma regardless of biopsy location, thus this area should be evaluated carefully bypathologists. The results also suggest that the HLD values of the quadrate lobe maymeasure smaller than those in the other lobes. Therefore, one would be able to obtainrepresentative data of the entire liver by taking a sample from any single lobe except forthe quadrate lobe. HLD measurements are needed in order to accumulate potentially usefulinformation on the microanatomy and pathophysiology of the liver.
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