Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsThe NumbersHow Much Do Breasts Weigh?Height, Weight, & BMIThe Impact of DiseaseConclusionFrequently Asked Questions
Table of ContentsView All
View All
Table of Contents
The Numbers
How Much Do Breasts Weigh?
Height, Weight, & BMI
The Impact of Disease
Conclusion
Frequently Asked Questions
Organ weight is a complex subject. There are many factors—including body weight, height, lean body mass, and race—that cause organ weights to vary widely.
To figure out accurate ranges for organ weights, a lot more data need to be collected. Furthermore, this data needs to come from different types of people. Right now, such data are not routinely collected.
fotostorm / Getty Images
Organ weights used for reference need to come from forensicautopsies, which are usually performed in cases of suspicious, sudden, or traumatic death where a dead person’s organs are otherwise healthy.
Diseased organs assessed during hospital autopsies, however, shouldn’t be used to determine reference values because the disease can actually affect the weight of an organ. Furthermore, the number of autopsies performed is plummeting, giving researchers fewer opportunities to access and assess organ weights.
In 2001, French researcher Grandmaison and co-authors published a paper inForensic Science Internationalanalyzingorgan weightsfrom 684 autopsies performed on whites between 1987 and 1991.
This study’s power and concordance with other studies of organ weight, as well as a lack of research on the subject altogether, make it as good a source as any to calculate organ weights.
Based on the results of this study, the following are mean organ weights and ranges for men and women:
Organ
Average Weight in Men (grams)
Range in Men (grams)
Average Weight in Women (grams)
Range in Women (grams)
Heart
365
90-630
312
174-590
Liver
1677
670-2900
1475
508-3081
Pancreas
144
65-243
122
60-250
Right lung
663
200-1593
546
173-1700
Left lung
583
206-1718
467
178-1350
Right kidney
162
53-320
135
45-360
Left kidney
160
50-410
136
40-300
Spleen
156
30-580
140
33-481
Thyroid
25
12-87
20
5-68
To some extent, these values lack generalizability and can’t automatically be applied to all people in a population. Even though humans change very slowly over time, the results of this study are already dated.
In the purest sense,breastsaren’t organs per se, but rather a collection of mammary glands and mammary tissue fat. Nevertheless, the breasts are a distinct enough entity from the rest of the body that manysurgeonswho specialize in breast surgery consider “anatomic organs.”
In an oft-cited article titled“Contribution of Breast Volume and Weight to Body Fat Distribution in Females,”researchers suggest that (based on their assessment) a pair of female breasts weigh about 3.5 percent of the weight of total body fat. However, the sample size of this study is small and the results are somewhat dated.
According to the formula, a woman who carries 40 pounds of total body fat would have breasts that weight about 1.4 pounds for the pair.
“Breast weight is very variable,” says Dr. Bradford Hsu, a breast surgeon affiliated with Sharp Healthcare in Chula Vista, California. “Depending on the age and development of the person involved, both breasts combined can weigh as little as 100 grams or up to four or five kilograms.”
However, the effect offibrocystic, adenomatous, or tumorigenic changes on breast weight is relative.
“If you have a small, golf-ball-sized tumor in a small breast,” says Hsu, “that tumor takes up more of the breast than it does in somebody who has a very large breast. In one person, that tumor may represent a third of her breast mass, and in another person, that tumor may represent less than one percent of her breast mass.”
Besides disease, another important factor that affects breast mass is diet and exercise. When people lose weight, they tend to do so uniformly.
For example, if a pear-shaped woman were to lose weight, she would still retain her pear shape but at a smaller mass. She would be proportionately smaller.
Women don’t lose a higher proportion of body weight from one specific body part—like the breasts—after engaging in diet and exercise. Targeted fat loss or “spot reduction” is unlikely.
A woman who loses weight will not experience a conspicuous decrease in breast size. Her breasts would be appropriate for her new weight and in proportion with the rest of her body—everything would just be smaller.
On a related note, as with the breasts, people lose a proportional amount of weight from the buttocks while dieting.
Height, Weight, Lean Body Mass, & BMI
Research shows that people who aretaller, weigh more (have a higherbody mass index, or BMI), and have more lean body mass may have heavier organs.
Of these factors, some research suggests that height may best correlate with most organ weights; taller people have organs that weigh more and are proportionately bigger.
Age and sex also affect organ weight. On average, women tend to have lighter organs than men do. Furthermore, as with lean body mass, organ weights tend to decrease with age.
Age-related decreases in organ weight are particularly noticeable in brain mass. In other words, a person’s brain will become smaller as they age, which is a natural process. On a related note, brain mass has nothing to do with intelligence; having a bigger brain doesn’t make someone smarter.
Results from a 1994 study published inDer Pathologe—and based on more than 8000 autopsies—suggest that the averagebrain weightin men without brain disease is 1336 grams and the average brain weight in women without brain disease is 1198 grams.
One physical parameter that exerts an unclear effect on organ weight is obesity.Obesityis an epidemic in the United States and rising rates are undermining the credibility of organ weight reference values.
Certain pathology sources express organ weights as a percentage of body weight – defining a direct and proportional relationship.
It should probably come as no surprise that the effect of disease or pathology on organ weight is highly variable and complex. Certain illnesses cause organs to weigh more and certain illnesses cause organs to weigh less.
Chronic alcohol use is associated with an increased size of the heart (cardiomegaly) and an increased size of the liver (hepatomegaly). Eventually, however, liver weight in people dependent on alcohol can decrease with the development ofcirrhosis. With cirrhosis, healthy liver tissue is replaced with scar tissue.
In a 2016 paper published inDiabetologia, Campbell-Thompson and co-authors suggest that people withType 1 diabetesexperience substantial decreases inpancreatic weightevident at the onset of disease. People with type 2 diabetes, however, don’t experience a decrease in pancreas weight.
In other words, results from this study suggest that pancreases in people with type 1 diabetes “shrink,” and this shrinkage can be observed when a person is first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (typically during childhood or adolescence).
As for the brain,cerebral atrophy– seen in conditions such as stroke and dementia – results in decreased brain weight.
There is still a lot to learn about organ weights. Investment in such research is important because the size and weight of organs are factors used during the autopsy to determine health status and cause of death.
Currently, the reference values used for organ weights aren’t based on convincing evidence and aren’t universal.
Looking forward, noninvasive imaging modalities, such as MRI and CT, may prove useful in determining organ weights without the need for an autopsy.
In an article published inInvestigative Radiology, Jackowski and co-authors found that the weight of the liver and the spleen can be estimated using imaging data and volume-analyzing software.
In fact, the researchers suggest that such imaging may be more accurate than autopsy at determining liver and spleen weights in the case of congestion (shock) since no changes in intrahepatic blood volume occur during imaging.
They also predict more promise in the use of CT to determine organ weights – CT is less expensive and easier to use thanMRI, and purification of gases and embolized air limit the utility of MRI. Embolized air refers to air caught in the blood vessels of the circulatory system.
The skin, which accounts for around 16% of a person’s total body weight.
The liver is widely regarded as the heaviest organ inside the body.
Organs can become heavier—known as organomegaly—as a result of certain diseases and conditions. For example:
8 Sources
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Davidson LE, Kelley DE, Heshka S, et al.Skeletal muscle and organ masses differ in overweight adults with type 2 diabetes.J Appl Physiol (1985). 2014;117(4):377–382. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01095.2013Hamza A.Declining rate of autopsies: implications for anatomic pathology residents.Autops Case Rep. 2017;7(4):1–2. doi:10.4322/acr.2017.036de la Grandmaison GL, Clairand I, Durigon M.Organ weight in 684 adult autopsies: new tables for a Caucasoid population.Forensic Sci Int. 2001;119(2):149–154. doi:10.1016/s0379-0738(00)00401-1D’Orazio J, Jarrett S, Amaro-Ortiz A, Scott T.UV radiation and the skin.Int J Mol Sci. 2013;14(6):12222-12248. doi:10.3390/ijms140612222Radiopaedia.Organomegaly.March of Dimes.Weight gain during pregnancy.Cleveland Clinic.Enlarged liver.Schoppen ZJ, Balmert LC, White S, et al.Prevalence of abnormal heart weight after sudden death in people younger than 40 years of age.J Am Heart Assoc. 2020;9(18):e015699. doi:10.1161/JAHA.120.015699
Davidson LE, Kelley DE, Heshka S, et al.Skeletal muscle and organ masses differ in overweight adults with type 2 diabetes.J Appl Physiol (1985). 2014;117(4):377–382. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01095.2013
Hamza A.Declining rate of autopsies: implications for anatomic pathology residents.Autops Case Rep. 2017;7(4):1–2. doi:10.4322/acr.2017.036
de la Grandmaison GL, Clairand I, Durigon M.Organ weight in 684 adult autopsies: new tables for a Caucasoid population.Forensic Sci Int. 2001;119(2):149–154. doi:10.1016/s0379-0738(00)00401-1
D’Orazio J, Jarrett S, Amaro-Ortiz A, Scott T.UV radiation and the skin.Int J Mol Sci. 2013;14(6):12222-12248. doi:10.3390/ijms140612222
Radiopaedia.Organomegaly.
March of Dimes.Weight gain during pregnancy.
Cleveland Clinic.Enlarged liver.
Schoppen ZJ, Balmert LC, White S, et al.Prevalence of abnormal heart weight after sudden death in people younger than 40 years of age.J Am Heart Assoc. 2020;9(18):e015699. doi:10.1161/JAHA.120.015699
Interview with Bradford Hsu, MD
Meet Our Medical Expert Board
Share Feedback
Was this page helpful?Thanks for your feedback!What is your feedback?OtherHelpfulReport an ErrorSubmit
Was this page helpful?
Thanks for your feedback!
What is your feedback?OtherHelpfulReport an ErrorSubmit
What is your feedback?
By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.Cookies SettingsAccept All Cookies
By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.
Cookies SettingsAccept All Cookies
