Outcome of bile leakage following liver resection with hepaticojejunostomy for liver cancer

We aimed to investigate contemporary management and outcomes of bile leakage in patients who underwent hepatectomy with hepaticojejunostomy for liver malignancy. The NSQIP database was used to study clinical data of patients who underwent a hepatectomy with hepaticojejunostomy for a primary hepatobiliary cancer and developed bile leakage between 1/2014 and 12/2017. Multivariate regression analysis was performed to investigate outcomes. Five hundred patients underwent a hepatectomy with hepaticojejunostomy for a malignant primary hepatobiliary cancer (41% intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, 38.2% hilar cholangiocarcinoma, 9.8% hepatocellular carcinoma, 6% gallbladder cancer, and 5% others). The rate of bile leakage was 33.4%. Most patients (90.4%) did not require re-exploration. In 77 of 157 patients (49.1%), bile leakages were contained with intraoperatively placed drain(s) and no additional surgical intervention was required. A total of 71 patients (42.5%)—including 64 patients with intraoperative drains—required interventional radiology (IR)-guided drainage, with a 88.7% success rate. A total of 16 patients (9.6%) required re-exploration to control the leakage, with 8 of them having undergone failed IR-drainage. When running multivariate analysis, post-hepatectomy liver failure (AOR: 158.26, P < 0.01), preoperative sepsis (AOR: 36.24, P = 0.03), and smoking (AOR: 14.07, P = 0.03) were significantly associated with mortality of patients. Biliary leakage is relatively common following hepatectomy with hepaticojejunostomy for liver malignancy (33.4%), but most patients (90.4%) do not require re-exploration. Intraoperatively placed drains successfully controlled 46.7% of bile leakages. IR-guided drain placement had a 88.7% success rate for adequate leak control.