Surgical resection for hepatocellular carcinoma.

ABSTRACT

The result of liver resection for symptomatic hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is poor. For Oriental patients, the operative mortality is between 6.7% and 36%. The one-year and five-year survival are 40% and 15% respectively. Coexisting liver cirrhosis is a problem and is responsible for the high operative mortality as well as a significant proportion of late deaths. Technical innovations are being applied to liver resection but further evaluation is necessary to prove their claimed efficacy. Screening of the whole population or high risk individuals enable HCC to be detected early. Most tumours discovered by screening is resectable and the prognosis is better. More efforts should be directed toward improving the accuracy and yield of screening procedures.