aDivision of Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation, Department of Surgery, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Korea. bDepartment of Surgery, Chungnam National University Hospital, Chungnam National University School of Medicine, Daejeon, Korea
∗Corresponding author.
E-mail address: khkim620@amc.seoul.kr (K.-H. Kim)
Abstract：Salvage liver transplantation (LT) is frequently performed on patients who experience recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after primary hepatectomy for HCC [1,2] . The main concern in these patients is the technical feasibility of salvage LT, especially as prior hepatectomy may result in heavy adhesions [3,4] . Salvage living donor LT (LDLT) is a more demanding procedure than salvage deceased donor LT (DDLT) using an entire donor graft with a long vascular pedicle [5,6] . Because less than optimal dissection of perihepatic adhesions could result in uncontrollable pinpoint bleedings at the dissection surface [1,5] , many transplant surgeons avoid performing salvage LDLT. Minimally invasive laparoscopic hepatectomy (LH) results in fewer intraperitoneal adhesions than the open method, reducing the difficulty of surgical dissection during future LT [7–10] . To date, however, no study has compared salvage LDLT for recurrent HCC after LH to that after open hepatectomy (OH).
2018, Vol. 17 
