The use of endo-GIA vascular staplers in liver surgery and their potential benefit: a review.
Stapling devices have been introduced for safety and to reduce the overall operative time in many surgical procedures. In hepatobiliary surgery, i.e. liver resection, several types of staplers are in use. While transection of hepatic vessels with vascular staplers is well established, their use in dissecting hepatic parenchyma has only been assessed recently. Its advantages were especially a low rate of biliary complications (i.e., bile fistulas, bilioma) and reduced bleeding. As expected, the operative time was decreased dramatically while both the complication rate in general and the overall costs for stapler hepatectomy were comparable with other techniques used in high-volume centers. Thus, endo-GIA vascular staplers can be safely used to dissect the hepatic parenchyma in a routine clinical setting with low incidence of surgical complications.