Nonanatomic hepatic resection with a pledgetted suturing technique.

Background/purpose: Anatomic hepatic resection is dependent on the segmental infrastructure of the liver, whereas nonanatomic resection is independent of structural planes and is often fraught with excessive bleeding. The authors describe their experience with a novel technique using pledgetted suturing for extensive liver resection in patients with benign or malignant hepatic tumors.

Methods: Four children, (mean age, 24.7 +/- 12.5 months) underwent liver resection for the following hepatic lesions: hepatoblastoma, invasive Wilms' tumor, Caroli's disease, and infantile hemangioendothelioma. In the child with hepatoblastoma, the lesion was considered unresectable by segmental anatomy. A surgical technique was designed in which nonabsorbable 2-0 Teflon felt pledgetted sutures were placed through the liver parenchyma in a nonanatomic resection plane. The mattress sutures were sequentially tied until the resection plane was defined. The resection was sharply completed with a scalpel along the line of pledgetted sutures, independent of hepatic segmental anatomy.

Results: Complete surgical resections of the hepatic lesions were obtained in all cases. Estimated blood loss was minimal with a mean of 5.3 +/- 0.9 mL/kg. No patient received a blood transfusion as a result of the hepatic resection. There were no postoperative hepatic complications resulting from the resection. The child with hepatoblastoma had a delayed recovery, resulting in reexploration that ruled out a subphrenic abscess.

Conclusions: The pledgetted suturing technique for hepatic resection is relatively bloodless, safe, easy to perform, and may enable a complete surgical resection of otherwise unresectable lesions. We advocate this technique when approaching a large hepatic lesion that would entail a difficult or incomplete anatomic resection in infants. J Pediatr Surg 36:209-212.