[Liver resection in liver cirrhosis]

The benefits of liver resection for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and concomitant liver cirrhosis have been questionable due to high rates of postoperative complications. As a result of advance in surgical techniques, along with improved perioperative management and increased knowledge of the pathophysiology of liver cirrhosis, liver resection in cirrhotic patients has become a safer surgical procedure during the 1990s. This article introduces our techniques of parenchymal resection in patients with liver cirrhosis, avoiding inflow occlusion of the hepatic circulation by using a Cavitron Ultrasonic Surgical Aspirator (CUSA) and bipolar cautery that is equipped with a mechanism for channeling water at the point of cauterization. Analysis of survival rates showed that surgical resection was more advantageous than treatment such as percutaneous ethanol injection, although the discovery of multicentric carcinogenesis in livers with hepatitis C viral infection required us to reconsider surgical indications for HCC and concomitant liver cirrhosis.