Removal of liver cancer

Liver cancer resection means surgery to remove cancer from the liver. Three-dimensional images can help surgeons plan removal when the anatomy is complex. During laparoscopic surgery, fluorescence imaging with indocyanine green can help show the tumour, liver segments and bile ducts, and help examine the edges of the removed tissue. These are planning and navigation tools used alongside the operation.

The distinction between cancer that starts in the liver and cancer that has spread there matters when comparing surgical results. Research on fluorescence-guided removal has included both groups, but the benefits seen in the combined results were not demonstrated separately in the group with cancer that had spread to the liver. Tumour size alone is not a treatment rule: research linking size to invasion of the tumour’s capsule studied people already selected for removal of primary liver cancer and did not establish a size cutoff for deciding who can have surgery.

For complex liver cancer surgery, a 2022 study compared 54 patients whose operations were planned with three-dimensional reconstruction and 51 patients in a comparison group. The average hospital stay for the operation was 9.7 days with reconstruction and 11.9 days without it. This was a retrospective comparison of 105 patients treated between 2014 and 2019, rather than a trial assigning patients randomly, so it does not show that the planning tool alone caused the difference or predict an individual’s recovery.

Open, laparoscopic and robotic approaches have also been compared. A 2022 review identified 2,728 robotic liver operations, more than three quarters for cancer, and used 38 comparative reports to assess outcomes. It suggested possible short-term advantages over open surgery and smaller advantages over laparoscopy for major resections. The mixed diagnoses and operations limit how directly these findings apply to a particular liver cancer operation; they do not establish better long-term cancer survival.

Acute kidney injury, a sudden problem with kidney function, has been documented after removal of primary liver cancer. Research has also linked major postoperative complications with factors including liver stiffness, the surgical approach and blood loss during surgery. These findings concern groups of patients, not a personal risk estimate.

A more specific problem has been reported during removal of a very large liver tumour after drug treatment: potassium released from damaged tumour cells can rise in the blood and threaten the heart rhythm. In a 2026 report involving one patient, potassium rose during the operation and fell after treatment before the operation ended. This illustrates a monitoring concern in that particular setting, not how often it happens in liver cancer surgery generally.

Recovery in hospital has been studied with different surgical planning and imaging tools. In the comparison of complex liver operations using three-dimensional reconstruction, liver function recovered sooner in the reconstruction group. A 2025 review of 20 studies involving 1,283 patients with primary or metastatic liver cancer also found shorter hospital stays overall with fluorescence-guided surgery than with conventional methods. These findings describe hospital recovery, not a timetable for returning to work or travelling home.