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Four male patients have been studied with regard to arterio-hepatic venous extraction of oxygen and Indocyanine Green dye (ICG). Two patients with alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver had an atrophic right and a hypertrophic left liver lobe. They also had higher extractions of oxygen and ICG over the right than over the left lobe, most pronounced for ICG. The two other patients, one with an extrahepatic biliary stasis and one with a chronic pancreatitis, had livers of normal size and configuration. They displayed no regional differences in extraction of oxygen, but one of them had a lower extraction of ICG over the right than over the left hepatic lobe. The findings in the patients with cirrhosis might be explained by regional variations in metabolic rate and hepatic cell function in relation to blood flow, and possibly also by shunts from the portal vein to the hepatic veins of the left lobe. Total hepatic blood flow cannot be estimated with sufficient accuracy by the Bradley technique in patients in whom the hepatic extraction of the substance used is low and large regional variations in extraction may occur.