Recent concepts in the treatment of hepatic trauma: facts and fallacies

Experience with 85 consecutive patients treated at Bellevue Hospital for hepatic trauma over the past two years has established the importance of several principles of management. Simple liver injuries can be treated by superficial suture and drainage. Using this approach in 57 patients there were no deaths and no postoperative abscesses. Among 28 other patients with complex liver injuries, the first six patients (Group 1) were treated by lobectomy alone (1 patient), lobectomy and intracaval shunt (3 patients), hepatic artery ligation (1 patient), and left lateral segmentectomy (1 patient). Only one of the six survived. In the next 22 consecutive patients managed by the Pringle maneuver combined with finger fracture technique of the hepatic parenchyma and a viable omental pack there was only one death (4.5%). An intracaval shunt was used successfully once in this group, in a patient with a lacerated middle hepatic vein. Only one patient developed a postoperative subphrenic abscess (4.5%), and no patients required reoperation for bleeding. Eighty-two per cent of these 22 patients safely tolerated inflow occlusion of greater than 20 minutes with steroid protection. Hepatic artery ligation is superfluous in the majority of liver injuries. In complex injuries involving lobar branches of the portal vein, the retrohepatic cava or hepatic veins hepatic artery ligation is probably ineffective. Hepatic resection is rarely required and carries a prohibitive mortality. The finger fracture technique provides a direct approach to the source of heniorrhage and is probably the procedure of choice.