Surgery in the patient with liver disease

The advent of liver transplantation has greatly improved the long-term survival of patients with decompensated cirrhosis, and surgery is now performed more frequently in patients with advanced liver disease. The estimation of perioperative mortality is limited by the retrospective nature of and biased patient selection in the available clinical studies. The overall experience is that, in patients with cirrhosis, use of the Child classification and Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score provides a reasonably precise estimation of perioperative mortality. Careful preoperative preparation and monitoring to detect complications early in the postoperative course are essential to improve outcomes.