Long-term quality of life after hepatic resection: health is not simply the absence of disease.

Background: Due to advances in operative methods and perioperative care, mortality and morbidity following major hepatic resection have decreased substantially, making long-term quality of life (QoL) an increasingly prominent issue. We evaluated whether postoperative diagnosis was associated with long-term QoL and health in patients requiring hepatic surgery for benign or malignant disease.

Methods: QoL was evaluated using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core-30 and the liver-specific QLQ-LMC21 module.

Results: Between 2002 and 2006, 249 patients underwent hepatic surgery for malignant (76%) and benign (24%) conditions. One hundred thirty-five patients were available for QoL analysis after a mean of 26.5 months. There was no statistical difference in global QoL scores between patients with malignant and benign diseases (p = 0.367). Neither the extent of the resection (> or =2 segments vs. <2 segments; p = 0.975; OR = 0.988; 95% CI = 0.461-2.119) nor patient age had a significant influence on overall QoL (p = 0.092).

Conclusions: These results indicate that long-term QoL for patients who underwent liver resection for malignant disease is quite good and that a poor clinical prognosis does not seem to correlate with a poor QoL.