Safety of intermittent pringle maneuver cumulative time exceeding 120 minutes in liver resection : a further step in favor of the "radical but conservative" policy

OBJECTIVE: We retrospectively compared the short-term outcome of a consecutive cohort of patients who underwent hepatectomy with intermittent clamping ranging between 60 and 120 minutes with those having a clamping time exceeding 120 minutes.BACKGROUND:: Intermittent Pringle maneuver is widely used to minimize blood loss during hepatectomy, without an established time limit. However, many authors claim it is dangerous for patient outcome.MATERIAL AND METHODS:: Among 426 consecutive patients who underwent hepatectomy, we retrospectively selected 189 whose intermittent clamping time exceeded 60 minutes: 117 of these had intermittent Pringle maneuver lasting less than 120 minutes (group 1) and 72 clamping time exceeded 120 minutes (group 2). Groups were homogeneous for demographics, preoperative laboratory tests, background liver, and type of tumors.RESULTS:: Operation length, and number of lesions removed, was significantly higher in group 2. Conversely, the two groups experienced similar amount of blood loss, rate of blood transfusions, overall and major morbidity, and 30- and 90-day postoperative mortality. In particular, in group 2 there was no mortality at all. Mean serum total bilirubin and alanine aminotransferase level on seventh pod resulted significantly higher in group 2, conversely mean aspartate aminotransferase, cholinesterases, and prothrombin time not differed in 2 groups.CONCLUSIONS:: This study shows that hepatectomies done with intermittent clamping exceeding 120 minutes are as safe as those performed with shorter one despite more complex tumor presentations. This seems encouraging the diffusion of procedures done in 1 stage for extensive liver diseases despite the prolonged clamping time.