ABSTRACT
Liver disease or dysfunction may influence the disposition of drugs. Therefore it has been proposed to use the capacity of the liver to metabolize certain drugs as a measure of hepatic function. In the past few years the search for novel approaches to assess hepatic performance was greatly stimulated by the rapid expansion of organ transplantation. This development has confronted us with new diagnostic and prognostic problems related to the assessment of donor liver quality or the evaluation of graft dysfunction and pretransplant prognosis. Clinically useful information is often not obtainable by conventional tests in these situations. For the assessment of liver function, static or dynamic tests can be used. The traditional static tests are only an indirect measure of hepatic function. These tests involve one measurement of the concentration of an endogenous substance at a single point in time.
