Home » Major Surgery of the Human Body » Liver Surgery is a medical procedure that uses manual operations and certain techniques with instruments on a patient. This is required in investigating or treating pathological conditions like an injury or a disease. A person who performs this act is called a surgeon and a surgery can last from few minutes to several hours. A major surgery of the human body is the liver surgery. Liver is one of the most important functional units of a human body.

It is a major component of the human body and plays a major role in the process of metabolism. Some of the important functions that are performed by the liver include the decomposition of RBC, storage of glycogen, synthesis of plasma protein and in the process of detoxification.The liver is also the largest gland of the human body. The position of the liver is in the thoracic region below the diaphragm. The liver secretes bile, which is a compound that helps in digestion. Besides it is also involved in a number of other biochemical functions of the body. When we talk about liver surgery it can mean different kinds of liver operations.Liver surgery can have numerous kinds of operations because, the liver is susceptible to several disorders. The most common type of liver surgery is resection. In this liver operation, a portion of the liver is removed. One of the most typical diseases is malignant tumor in the liver when this operation can be performed. Tumors of the liver can be primary or metastatic. When the tumor develops in the liver itself it is called primary and when it migrates to the liver from another organ it is called metastatic.

In majority of the cases, the metastases migrate from the colon. If there is a single tumor or numerous tumors which are confined to one side can be successfully resected with the survival period of 5 years. The patients of Liver resection are carefully checked by a multidisciplinary team to ensure that there is no extrahepatic tumor, where the tumor occurs outside the liver. Liver surgery is much successful in the cases of benign tumors in the liver.

Cyst, hemangioma and adenoma are the benign tumors of liver and these can be successfully operated. If the size of the benign tumor is very small or superficial it can also be removed laparoscopically. This is done my make tiny punctures in the organ called abdomen while viewing a camera that shows close view of the internal organs. Liver transplantation is also an important liver surgery and this comes of as a great use in the liver resection. The resection can take as much as 3-5 hours and can be done even without any blood transfusion. In this case 75% of the hepatic tissue is removed. One will require 5-6 weeks to recover.