Severance Hospital Organ Transplant Center Achieves 100 Cases of Robotic Liver Resection Surgery

On the 29th of last month, a ceremony celebrating the 100th case of donor robotic hepatectomy was held at the Severance Hospital Organ Transplant Center. (Photo by Severance Hospital)

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Chunhee] Severance Hospital Organ Transplant Center has achieved 100 cases of robotic liver resection surgery.

The liver transplant team at Severance Hospital Organ Transplant Center announced on the 1st that since starting the country's first donor robotic liver transplant program in April 2016, they recently performed robotic liver resection surgery for the 100th time by transplanting a wife’s liver to a liver cancer patient.

Mr. A (56 years old, male) was diagnosed with liver cancer in January last year. Especially, he was diagnosed with cirrhosis accompanied, making a liver transplant necessary. His wife, Mrs. B, decided to donate her liver after the attending physician explained that transplantation was the only way to restore liver function. On the 7th of last month, donor Mrs. B, who underwent the 100th robotic liver resection surgery performed by Professor Choi Ki-hong of the Liver, Biliary, and Pancreatic Surgery team at Severance Hospital Organ Transplant Center, successfully completed the surgery and was discharged in good health.

In Korea, due to the severe shortage of brain-dead donors, the proportion of living donor liver transplants, where family members donate their liver, is high. Living donor liver transplantation involves resecting about 60-70% of the donor’s right liver and transplanting it to the recipient. Since the donor must return to society without complications after partial liver removal, it is considered a more challenging surgery than brain-dead donor liver transplantation.

Until now, liver resection for living donor liver transplantation required open surgery. Open surgery leaves scars at the surgical site, which was a burden for donors. However, with recent advances in laparoscopic technology, laparoscopic liver resection surgeries have been actively performed. Laparoscopic surgery leaves almost no scars for donors and allows faster recovery after surgery, but it is difficult to handle surgical instruments, making it challenging for less experienced surgeons to perform.

Robotic technology allows delicate access through precise instrument control, and compared to open surgery, it results in significantly less bleeding while maintaining the same level of recovery, leading to high patient satisfaction.

Last year, Professor Choi’s team published a comparative study on robotic living donor right hepatectomy and open surgery in the international surgical journal 'Annals of Surgery.' The study showed that the donor’s surgical blood loss in robotic surgery was 109.8 ml, significantly less than 287.1 ml in open surgery. There was no difference in the occurrence of major complications such as bile duct issues between robotic and open surgeries.

Professor Choi Ki-hong said, “Donor robotic liver resection surgery offers the same level of recovery as open surgery but with less bleeding, fewer complications, and smaller surgical scars, resulting in higher patient satisfaction. As robotic surgery is increasingly applied in various fields, it is expected that robotic surgeries will also increase in the transplant field.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.