Purpose: Laparoscopic surgery has recently shown rapid development, and has been applied in most abdominal surgeries. It has also been adopted in hepatobiliary surgery, especially in the resection of liver tumors. Significant advantages of laparosopic surgery over the conventional open method have been reported, however, the safety of the surgical resection margin and radicality of the tumor resection remain to be clarified. This study was conducted in order to assess the feasibility and potential superiority of laparoscopic liver resection of hepatocellular tumors to open surgery.

Methods: This study included 76 patients who underwent liver resection for hepatocellular carcinoma at Dong-A University Hospital from January 2008 through June 2010. Of these 63 cases, 31 patients underwent laparoscopic resections and 33 underwent open liver resections. Both groups were confirmed as hepatocellular carcinoma by postoperative pathology and analyzed retrospectively.

Results: There were no statistically significant differences in preoperative parameters, such as age, height, body weight, Child Pugh score, ASA, and tumor size in both groups. There were no significant differences in operating time, duration of hospital stay, safety margins of surgical resection, postoperative complications, and rate of recurrence and occurrence of new lesions in both groups, however, better disease free survival was observed in the laparoscopic group (p=0.024).

Conclusion: Findings of this study showed that the laparoscopic group had better results in free survival period than the open group. Conduct of larger scale prospective studies wound confirm the superiority of the laparoscopic liver resection to the conventional open procedure in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Findings of this study also suggest that assessment of the factors associated with the quality of life, such as degree of postoperative pain, and size of the incisional scar, and long term postoperative complications may play an additional role in favoring the laparoscopic liver resection. To elucidate the superiority of the laparoscopic liver resection to the conventional open method, conduct of study involving a larger study group and a longer prospective research period will be needed.

Keywords Hepatocellular carcinoma, Laparoscopic hepatectomy

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