Repeated hepatic resections for liver metastases from colon carcinoma. Montpellier Cancer Institute experience

The main cause of death after hepatic resection for colorectal liver metastases is tumor recurrence. An improvement in survival may be achieved by resection of recurrent hepatic metastases as previously reported. In this paper we report our experience with 13 repeated liver resections in 11 patients. The post-operative mortality was 8% and the morbidity was 23% with two biliary tract fistulas and one recurrent pleural effusion. The median survival time from the first hepatic resection was 23 months, but differed according to the length of the disease-free interval (more than 1 year and less than 1 year: 49 and 17 months, respectively (P < 0.05). Our results suggest that repeated hepatic resection is technically a safe procedure and may be beneficial to selected patients. All candidates should be carefully evaluated pre-operatively for extrahepatic disease.