[Surgical treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma]

Due to recent rapid advances in imaging modalities, there has been a marked increase in the early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Also, the emergence of effective local treatment methods has lead to the necessity for a wider selection of therapeutic modalities depending on the individual characteristics of each patient, such as tumor factors and hepatic factors, rather than a single uniform approach. At present, accurate preoperative liver function evaluation is available, and in addition, increased knowledge of the liver anatomy through liver transplantation, and advances in postoperative patient care has subsequently decreased the morbidity and mortality rates significantly after surgery. Such newly developed techniques and acquired knowledge has allowed the surgical option to expand from the classical hepatic lobectomy to systematic subsegmentectomy. Not only for early HCC, but also for intermediate HCC and advanced HCC, hepatectomy has shown the best results in each stage of disease with regard to treatment goals. It is therefore thought that hepatectomy should always be considered as the main treatment method in the multimodality treatment of HCC, as long as the liver function reserve permits, to enhance the quality of life, increase survival, and to cure disease. The authors present here a summary of the role of surgical approaches in HCC with respect to recent increases in the detection of early stage disease, new therapeutic modalities, and a new staging system for HCC.