Living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) provides an alternative for patients with end-stage liver disease to receive a life-saving transplant operation. As compared to deceased donor liver transplantation, LDLT is both surgically and ethically more challenging, as the operation involves taking a partial liver graft from a healthy living donor. The evaluation and selection of a living donor is a more complicated process which can be no less controversial than the donor operation itself. There are three main objectives. The first is to determine that a part of the donor's liver can be used reliably as a graft for the recipient. The second is to ensure the safety of the donor. The final objective is to assess the outcome of the recipient including the risks and benefits as compared to a deceased donor liver transplant. To ensure the safety of the operation, particularly for the donor, the pretransplant evaluation of a potential living donor according to a planned protocol and criteria is mandatory. There is extremely wide variation in the practice of donor evaluation among different transplant centers because of differences in the availability of deceased donor grafts, experience in LDLT, prevalence of various diseases, and socio-cultural factors.Metabolic syndrome, which includes a combination of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia, represents a common risk factor for premature cardiovascular disease [1]. It is also closely but not causally related to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) [2] which spans from steatosis to steatohepatitis. Hence, the presence of metabolic syndrome may potentially increase the operative risk of a living liver donor for both reasons. In this issue of the journal, Al-hamoudi et al. summarizes the outcome of 1065 potential donors who were evaluated for living liver donation at the King Faisal Hospital in Saudi Arabia [3], and identified elements of metabolic syndrome as the most common reasons for rejecting potential living liver donors. In potential donors for adults, the donation rate was only 13 %, with the most common reasons for rejection being a body mass index [28 in 28 % and diabetes in 19.2 %. Hepatic steatosis [10 % on radiologic imaging or liver biopsy was the reason for rejection in an additional 8 % of the donors. As a high volume center with an average of 40 LDLTs per year, which accounted for over 50 % of the annual case load of liver transplants, this experienced group from King Faisal Hospital has adopted a very cautious approach in donor selection with an upper age limit set at 45 years, a body mass index (BMI) under 28, and a policy of routine liver biopsy with the aim of accepting only donors with steatosis \10 %. The reasons as well as the consequences of such a cautious approach are obvious when considering the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in Saudi Arabia which is 10-15 % higher than in most developed countries [4].It is interesting to compare this experience from Saudi Arabia with the Hong Kong experience in a predominantly Chinese community...