Background: Preoperative portal vein embolization (PVE) induces ipsilateral atrophy of the hepatic parenchyma to be resected, as well as contralateral compensatory hypertrophy of the residual liver. However, there are two potential problems with this technique: inadequate contralateral hypertrophy and tumor progression while waiting for the non-embolized liver to hypertrophy. We devised a strategy to deal with these two problems by performing an ipsilateral hepatic artery embolization 6 weeks after an unsatisfactory PVE in an effort to accelerate the hypertrophy of the remnant liver.
Materials and methods: Two patients with colorectal liver metastases underwent to this sequential preoperative treatment in order to achieve resectability of their metastatic disease.
Results: Both patients successfully underwent major hepatic resection.
Conclusions: In our experience sequential ipsilateral portal vein and hepatic artery embolization extended the indications for liver resection for metastatic colorectal cancer.