Abstract: Liver resection is one of the important treatments of liver diseases, especially hepatocellular carcinoma. In China, the vast majority of liver cancer patients suffer from generalized damage of the liver parenchyma such as cirrhosis, lead to liver reserve function reducing in various degrees. Liver dysfunction or even liver failure after liver resection becomes an important reason of perioperative death and influences the patients′ long-term survival. Therefore, accurate preoperative evaluation of liver reserve function is very important. Though there are seveal kinds of assessment of liver reserve function in recent years, it still lack of a clinically recognized, comprehensive assessment method. This paper reviewed the clinical commonly used preoperative liver reserve function evaluation methods, summarizes and analyzes the value and the insufficiency of several important methods, and prospects the development of evaluation methods about preoperative liver reserve function.