Share this:
The liver is the body's largest internal organ, helping to digest food, remove waste and make proteins. It's essential for life.
When part of the liver is removed to treat cancer or other conditions, the remaining tissue must regenerate to restore liver function.
In this Mayo Clinic Minute, Dr. Patrick Starlinger, a hepatobiliary and pancreas surgeon at Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses research to help the liver regenerate after surgery.
Journalists: Broadcast-quality video (1:07) is in the downloads at the end of this post. Please courtesy: "Mayo Clinic News Network." Read the script.
How does the liver regenerate after surgery?
"The liver can regenerate quite dramatically, probably the most potential to regenerate in the entire human body, and we leverage this in liver surgery," says Dr. Starlinger.
Before surgery, the team measures liver volume and assesses liver function to determine how much can be safely removed to take out the tumor while leaving enough healthy liver to regenerate.
But in some patients, that regeneration does not happen, which can lead to liver failure and limit which tumors can be removed.
"Our area of research is so important to understand the mechanism of liver regeneration in humans, particularly because as we understand the mechanism, we can move forward with interventions to promote regeneration in these patients," says Dr. Starlinger.
What role does blood clotting play in liver regeneration?
Mayo Clinic researchers have analyzed liver samples from patients with healthy livers and those with underlying liver conditions to better understand what drives regeneration.
"We were able to discover that the blood coagulation system is crucially important to allow these mechanisms of liver regeneration to actually occur," says Dr. Starlinger.
More research is needed, but researchers hope these findings could eventually lead to treatments that promote liver regeneration and expand the limits of liver surgery.
