Surgical Management of Hepatocellular Carcinoma (Laparoscopic vs. open techniques)

Abstract

Laparoscopic approach in management of HCC has been progressively developed along the past two decades. Liver surgery was one of the last frontiers reached by minimally invasive surgery. Surgical technique and equipment evolved to overcome technical limitations, making laparoscopic liver resections (LLR) safe and feasible. Surgeons developed skills in a stepwise approach, beginning with low complexity operations for benign diseases and reaching high-complexity surgeries for malignant cases and living donor organ harvesting (Coelho et al., 2016). The laparoscopic approach has been increasingly gaining popularity as one of the minimally-invasive treatments of HCC (Kawaguchi et al., 2017). In this study, a comparison between laparoscopic approach and open approach was done to compare short-term results. This study was conducted on 100 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. 50 patients (50%) were treated by laparoscopic approach (Group A) while the other 50 patients (50%) were treated by open approach (Group B).