Timmermann Lea, Schmelzle Moritz, Potapov Evgenij, Müller Marcus, Lojewski Christian, Pratschke Johann, Schöning Wenzel
Department of Surgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.
Department of Cardiac Surgery, German Heart Center Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
J Surg Case Rep. 2020 Sep 15;2020(9):rjaa307. doi: 10.1093/jscr/rjaa307. eCollection 2020 Sep.
Successful implementation of left ventricular assist devices lead to a prolonged survival in patients with chronic terminal heart failure. Thus, patients with pre-existing left ventricular assist devices with abdominal comorbidities requiring abdominal surgery, e.g. for malignancy, are upcoming issues. We carried out a major liver resection for hepatocellular carcinoma in a patient with pre-existing left ventricular assist device. The importance of this case report is that it outlines the significance of oncologic resections in patients with left ventricular assist devices as an upcoming issue and provides an interdisciplinary approach.