Information from: The Gainsville Sun, http://www.gainesvillesun.com
(University of Florida Shands Hospital) Dr. Alan Hemming)

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Article published Jul 5, 2004
UF surgeons remove cancer from liver outside its body

GAINESVILLE, Fla. Surgeons at the University of Florida recently
performed a rare "ex-vivo" liver operation, in which they removed a
cancerous tumor from the liver while it was outside the body.

Doctors then put the liver back in the patient when the tumor was
gone.

The eight-hour operation is thought to be the first time in Florida -
and one of only a few times in the country - that doctors have cut
away a tumor from a liver outside the body and successfully
reimplanted the organ.

The unidentified patient went home two weeks after the April surgery.
While he has had some complications, he is still alive, said Dr. Alan
Hemming, director of hepatobiliary surgery and associate professor of
surgery in the UF College of Medicine.

Hemming has performed the surgery in Canada before, but believes the
procedure he performed at UF's Shands Hospital is one of the first
successful ex-vivo liver surgeries in the United States.

"The risks involved in this type of surgery are so high that you have
to be potentially trying to save someone's life to attempt it,"
Hemming told The Gainesville Sun for a story Monday.

The procedure would only be performed when a liver tumor is too
difficult to remove, because of how it is affecting the blood vessels
in the organ. The liver is taken out of the body and the tumor is
removed. Then the doctor must reconstruct the blood vessels to
restore the normal blood flow to the organ.

Putting it back in, the surgeon must connect the blood vessels to
those in the patient's body, the most complex part of the surgery.

"It typically takes two to three hours to remove the liver, two hours
to remove the tumor and reconstruct the blood vessels on the back
table, and another two hours to re-implant the liver," Hemming said.

According to information on the procedure from Shands, Hemming is one
of only a handful of surgeons worldwide who have performed the out-of-
body liver surgery.

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Information from: The Gainesville Sun,


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