Extending the limits for curative liver resections by portal vein embolization

The optimal chance of long-term survival for patients with liver metastasis and large hepatocellular carcinoma is curative liver resections. One of the major limiting factors in performing curative liver resections is the necessity of leaving enough functional parenchyma to avoid postoperative liver failure. The preoperative ipsilateral embolization of the portal vein (PVE) was introduced to produce compensatory hypertrophy of the future liver remnant. In this report, we compare the postoperative hepatic function of patients who had preoperative PVE to those with similar resections who did not have preoperative embolization. Also, for the first time, we report the outcome of those patients who were embolized but did not undergo liver resection because of extrahepatic disease identified at laparotomy.