Why the study?
Does aggressive surgical resection improve outcomes in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma extending into the right heart?
Does aggressive surgical resection improve outcomes in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma extending into the right heart?
Aggressive surgical resection may be a viable option for select patients with hepatocellular carcinoma extending into the right atrium, a condition traditionally considered inoperable.
May support resection in select hepatocellular carcinoma cases with right-heart extension; leaves open survival benefit versus nonoperative management.
Hepatocellular carcinoma with extension into the right heart is a recognized, albeit rare occurrence. Patients who present with tumors extending into the heart have generally been considered inoperable and had limited survival, many sustaining tumor embolism and/or sudden death. Resection has been fraught with intraoperative and perioperative mortality as well as considerable postoperative morbidity. We report an exceptional case of a patient with such a tumor successfully treated with an aggressive surgical approach and review the limited published experience.
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Florman et al. (2009) studied this question.
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