Abstract
Purpose : Recently, there have been several studies on the early results on the use of hepatectomy for the treatment of a variety of hepatic lesions. We report the early experience of our hospital after totally laparoscopic left hepatectomy in patients with intrahepatic stones in the left hemi-liver. Methods : We analyzed the medical records of patients on a retrospective bases, who had been diagnosed with left intrahepatic stones and had undergone an hepatectomy between January 2007 and June 2009. Patients were grouped according to their operative procedure into one of the following: open hepatectomy, laparoscopy-assisted hepatectomy, and totally laparoscopic hepatectomy. Results : There were 31 patients who underwent Lt hemihepatectomy and Lt lateral sectionectomy during the time period under study. Hepatectomy with open method, laparoscopy-assisted method, and totally laparoscopy method were performed in 10, 14, and 7 cases. There were no significant differences between the 3 methods for operating time and postoperative complications. However, the number of fasting times and hospital days was shorter with performing total laparoscopic hepatectomy than in other occasions. Conclusion : Totally laparoscopic liver resection is a safe and useful method for treating patients with intrahepatic stones and offers the advantage of quick patient recovery. Careful selection of appropriate patients and further development in the laparoscopic surgical technique resulting from accumulated experiences will help enable the laparoscopic hepatectomy to be performed more easily and safely in patients with intrahepatic stones.
