#gimed

🐱 Kitty Liver 🐱

Check meowt!

I'm a purrfect hepatic vein surrounded by hepatic lobules!

i♡histo

This is a hematoxylin and eosin stained slice through a liver that was injected with carbon/ink prior to fixation.

The liver is compose of numerous roughly hexagonal shaped lobules. Each lobule has a venule at its center (the central vein; top right) and a series of hepatic triads at its periphery. A triad is a collection of three structures - in this case branches of the hepatic artery, hepatic portal vein and hepatic duct.

Blood in the hepatic artery (oxygenated) and hepatic portal vein (rich in nutrients absorbed from the intestines) travels in sinusoids (the many narrow white spaces in this image) towards the central vein of each lobule. On its way through the sinusoids the blood is processed by the the many hepatocytes that line this region (the pink cells). Within the sinusoids reside many liver macrophages (Kupffer cells) that phagocytose debris traveling through sinusoids. Normally these cells are invisible in standard H&E preparations but recall that this tissue was injected with ink! The ink was phagocytosed by the macrophages filling their cytoplasm with carbon so that they are now visible as black cells in the sinusoids.

Once the blood enters the central vein of each hepatic lobule they drain into the hepatic veins (kitty!) until the blood reaches the inferior venal cava.

In this way all blood, rich in raw nutrients and toxins absorbed from the GI tract is processed by the liver before it enters the systemic circulation!