Right hepatic lobectomy for primary and metastatic tumour: experience in a community teaching hospital

The first eight patients who required either a total or extended hepatic lobectomy for malignant tumour at a community teaching hospital are reviewed. Two patients had primary liver tumours and six had metastatic adenocarcinomas, five from colorectal and one from an unknown primary tumour. There were no deaths perioperatively, morbidity was minimal and survival was encouraging. Three patients died of disseminated disease 9, 16 and 18 months respectively after hepatic resection. However, five patients were free of disease 19, 27, 52, 63 and 80 months after operation. The authors' initial experience compares favourably with that of others and demonstrates that major hepatic resection can be done safely and can offer prolonged survival of good quality to a selected group of patients, even when the tumour load is large.