Clinical Utility of the Difficulty Scoring System for Predicting Surgical Time of Laparoscopic Liver Resection

Introduction: Laparoscopic liver resection (LLR) has several problems, such as technical complexity and patient and tumor factors. A difficulty scoring system to preoperatively evaluate the difficulty of LLR was established at the second International Consensus Conference on Laparoscopic Liver Resection. The aim of this study was to explore the clinical usefulness of the difficulty scoring system for LLR. Patients and Methods: From January 2010 to June 2015, the records of 78 patients who had undergone LLR were retrospectively reviewed. The patients' data were used to assign a difficulty score, and the correlations between scores and surgical outcomes were investigated. Results: The mean surgical time was 256 minutes, and the mean blood loss was 168 mL. The difficulty score significantly correlated with surgical time and blood loss, but not with morbidity and postoperative hospital stay. Multivariate analysis showed that the difficulty score was an independent predictor of prolonged surgical time. Conclusions: The difficulty score was found to be an effective predictor of surgical time for LLR.