[Surgical therapy of liver cancer]

An account is given in this paper of surgical treatment of malignant tumors of the liver of patients in the Surgical Department of Charité over the past six years, with reference being made to both indications for surgery and therapeutic results. - In the period under review, treatment was applied to 335 patients with malignant tumors of the liver, among them 168 with liver metastases. Thirty-eight per cent of all tumours treated were localised in the right lobe and 19 per cent in the left. The portal hilum was affected in 15 per cent of all cases and the entire liver in 28 per cent. Promising curative therapy was considered practicable for 67 patients, whereas three underwent palliative surgery. Liver transplantation was performed on 21 patients with malignant tumours not accessible to meaningful surgical approach. The resection rate in cases of liver malignoma was 14.6 per cent. The record included 14 hemihepatectomies on the right side and eleven on the left as well as 24 instances of atypical or segment removal, primarily in cases of liver metastasation. Surgical lethality amounted to 6.1 per cent, while the three-year survival rate was 55 per cent, with the most favourable results being recorded from hepatocellular carcinoma with 81 per cent. Only seven per cent of 265 patients with inoperable malignant liver tumours were left alive after one year. Impaired wound healing, the most common postoperative complication, had to be coped with in 21 per cent of all cases. The rate of complications proved to be substantially controllable by pre-operative conditioning and careful postoperative intensive care.