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| Liver transplantation and liver resection as alternative treatments for primary hepatobiliary and secondary liver tumors: Competitors or allies? |
| Jan Lerut |
Institute for Experimental and Clinical Research (IREC), Université catholique Louvain (UCL), Avenue Hippocrate 56, 1200 Woluwe Saint Pierre, Brussels,
Belgium
E-mail address: Jan.lerut@saintluc.uclouvain.be |
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Abstract Although Starzl designed in the 1960’s liver transplantation (LT) to treat unresectable primary and also secondary liver tumors, transplantation still occupies a (too) small place in the respective therapeutic algorithms [1] . Due to the lack of (any) selection criteria, the concept of transplantation became rapidly challenged because of the prohibitively high incidence of tumor recurrence [1–3] . Not surprisingly, the “oncological pendulum” reversed in the nineties and moved the indication for LT from large multifocal lesions to a more limited tumor burden. In fact the paradigm changed towards transplanting the resectable and resecting the “untransplantable” cancer [4] . More recently the pendulum is going again in the opposite direction based on major progresses made in the medico-surgical treatment of these different tumors [5–14] . Seen the great potential of LT in the treatment of liver tumors, our team introduced in 2015 in the medical literature the term “transplant oncology” in clinical practice [15] .
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2024, Vol. 23 
