A Mayo Clinic surgeon led a research team to develop a smartphone application that can be used to calculate risk factors and predict the safety level of liver surgery for individuals.
"We have taken an important step in translating this into clinical practice by developing a freely available smartphone application that allows us to calculate our score and thus individualize the risk assessment of patients before liver resection. This sets a new standard in preoperative risk assessment and will significantly increase the safety of liver surgery for patients worldwide", said Patrick Starlinger.
Liver resection, a surgical removal of parts of the liver, is the main method for treatments of liver-specific cancer, according to Mayo Clinic. Surgeons can remove up to three-quarters of the liver and the organ will continue to function after the procedure. The higher the amount of resection, and various potential underlying diseases or factors, can influence the degree of recovery in patients after surgery.
Dr. Patrick Starlinger, a hepatobiliary and pancreas surgeon at Mayo Clinic’s Comprehensive Cancer Center in Rochester, Minnesota, published his study in Annals of Surgery. The model studied over 14,000 patients from 10 different institutions to develop an algorithm predicting risk for postoperative liver failure.
The risk prediction model incorporates basic characteristics of patients including age, sex, type of tumor, and degree of resection. It also factors in APRI+ALBI score—a liver function test using routine lab markers for determining preoperative degree of function—according to Mayo Clinic.
Participating medical centers included Medical University Vienna, University Hospital Vienna, Favoriten Clinic, Landstraße Clinic, Medical University Innsbruck, Wiener Neustadt Regional Hospital, Mayo Clinic Rochester MN., Karolinska University Hospital Bern University Hospital Heidelberg University Hospital and Mannheim's University Medicine — according to Medical University Vienna.
