Resection of hepatic metastasis from neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) improves quality of life and prolongs 5-year survival. Ablation can be utilized with surgery to achieve complete resection. Although several studies report long-term outcomes for patients undergoing ablation, none have explored perioperative effects of ablation in patients with metastatic NETs.

To determine if intra-operative ablation during hepatectomy increases risk of adverse outcomes such as surgical site infections (SSIs), bleeding, and bile leak.

A retrospective analysis of the hepatectomy National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database from 2015-2019 was performed to determine the odds of SSIs, bile leaks, or bleeding in patients undergoing intraoperative ablation when compared to hepatectomy alone.

Of the 966 patients included in the study, 298 (30.9%) underwent ablation during hepatectomy. There were 78 (11.7%) patients with SSIs in the hepatectomy alone group and 39 (13.1%) patients with a SSIs in the hepatectomy with ablation group. Bile leak occurred in 41 (6.2%) and 14 (4.8%) patients in the two groups, respectively; bleeding occurred in 117 (17.5%) and 33 (11.1%), respectively. After controlling for confounding variables, ablation did not increase risk of SSI (P = 0.63), bile leak (P = 0.34) or bleeding (P = 0.07) when compared to patients undergoing resection alone on multivariate analysis.

Intraoperative ablation with hepatic resection for NETs is safe in the perioperative period without significant increased risk of infection, bleeding, or bile leak. Surgeons should utilize this modality when appropriate to achieve optimal disease control and outcomes.

Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are epithelial tumors that can arise from most organs. They are indolent, slow growing neoplasms that are frequently discovered at a late stage when they become symptomatic from hormonal excretion by metastasizing to the liver. It is estimated that almost 80%-90% of these tumors are inoperable at the time of presentation[1]. However, several studies have demonstrated that resection of hepatic metastasis from NETs improves both quality of life and prolongs 5-year survival[2,3]. These studies demonstrated that aggressive management of hepatic neuroendocrine metastases with adjunct modalities such as transarterial embolization, chemoembolization, and thermal ablation significantly prolong long-term survival and improve patient outcomes[2,4]. Despite these findings there is hesitancy among surgeons to utilize radiofrequency ablation due to fear of bleeding, abdominal infections, and biliary tree injury[5,6].

Of the available image guided ablative therapies, ethanol, microwave, radiofrequency, and cyro-ablation are the most common. These adjuncts have been utilized for primary malignancies such as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cholangiocarcinoma and are now accepted as the curative treatment option for early HCC by most guidelines[4,7]. Similarly ablation has been utilized for metastatic disease for colorectal, breast, and NETs[1,4,8,9]. There is a scarcity of literature and guidelines on ablation for metastatic NETs, likely in part due to the rarity of the disease when compared to other liver metastasis. Several authors have reported their individual experience with ablation with NETs, claiming that it is a safe and efficacious treatment modality, but no multi-center studies or national database studies have been reported[10]. In this study, we set out to explore the effects of intra-operative ablation in patients undergoing hepatic resection for NETs. Using the American College of Surgeons (ACS) National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) database and Hepatectomy Procedure Targeted database we compared the rates of adverse outcomes in patients undergoing surgery alone vs surgery with intraoperative ablation. We hypothesize that patients who had liver ablation concurrently with their hepatectomy did not have significantly higher rates of bleeding, surgical site infections (SSIs), bile leaks, and readmission.

Management of liver malignancies is complex and is primarily driven by the pathology, size, location, and number of tumors. The surgical approach to liver malignancies has changed dramatically over the last few decades with the introduction and utilization of new technology, which has facilitated operative planning and improved surgical precision[10]. This has resulted in a marked decline in many perioperative complications[11]. Several adjunct modalities to surgery have been utilized to improve surgical outcomes, including portal vein embolization, stereotactic body radiation therapy, and thermal/chemical ablation. Ablation utilization has been rising over time for both primary liver and biliary tumors as well as metastatic colorectal disease[12-15]. The reported incidence of significant complications from ablation modalities ranges between 6%-11%[15,16]. Most studies report bleeding, abdominal infection, biliary track damage, portal vein thrombosis, and pleural effusion/pneumothorax as the most frequent complications, causing hesitancy in widespread utilization of ablation[5,15,17]. Despite this, the use of ablation therapy has been applied to patients with a variety of disease pathologies, including metastatic NETs to the liver.

Treatment algorithms for hepatic NETs metastases have changed over time. Non-operative management with chemotherapy, external beam radiation, and octreotide has been shown to be significantly inferior to surgical management[2]. Touzios et al[2] demonstrated that patients who did not undergo surgery had a median survival of 20 months while patients who underwent resection with or without ablation had a median survival of greater than 96 months. Furthermore, an aggressive approach to these lesions not only improved survival, but also provided symptomatic relief from the release of active hormones. Up to 95% of patients in the operative group experienced symptom relief, while only 42% in the non-operative group had similar response. Therefore, aggressive surgical approach with adjuncts such as radiofrequency ablation and trans-arterial chemoembolization has grown in popularity for both symptom control and survival benefits[4]. Prior literature has established that curative intent is the best treatment option for hepatic metastasis from NETs.

Given the evidence for aggressive surgical control of metastatic NETs, we set out to explore the perioperative risks of ablation in conjunction with hepatic resection. Several studies report the overall morbidity of ablation used concurrently with resection to be between 20% and 42%[2,18]. However, these studies were limited by insufficient sample sizes for multivariate analysis as well as use of composite outcomes; as a result, it is difficult to determine whether there is an association between ablation therapy and specific adverse outcomes. Studies describing ablation monotherapy in patients with unresectable NETs hepatic metastasis were similarly restricted by sample size and use of composite outcomes, as well as being limited by lack of generalizability[19,20]. In our study we report the frequencies of each adverse outcome and demonstrate that intra-operative ablation does not increase risk of common complications when compared to hepatectomy alone.

This study represents the largest sample of patients to date with hepatic NET metastases treated simultaneously with ablation and surgery. Of the 966 patients included in the study, 298 (30.8%) underwent ablation concurrently with a resection. In principle, ablation is combined with surgical resection in patients with bilateral tumors, for tumors deep in the liver parenchyma, or when resections of many individual lesions would significantly decrease the future liver remnant[2]. We therefore expected patients in the ablation group to have large tumors, require extensive hepatectomy, or have greater number of lesions. Although the ablation group had fewer extensive hepatic resections (total lobectomy or trisemgmentectomies), there were more patients with > 8 tumors and with greater number of smaller lesions. This was unsurprising, as previous studies reported higher efficacy of ablation for smaller lesions[18,20,21].

The rate of significant bleeding in our study was 15.5%. The reported rates in the literature vary widely between 1.1% and 25%, likely due to the subjective nature of “significant bleeding”[22,23]. Unsurprisingly, minimally invasive approach and smaller resections in the form of partial lobectomy were protective from bleeding. On the other hand, neoadjuvant chemotherapy and larger lesions increased risk of significant bleeding, with the greatest risk in patients with lesions greater than 5 cm. When potential confounders were included in the multivariate model, intra-operative ablation did not confer a significant risk on bleeding (OR = 0.61, P = 0.07) when compared to surgery alone (Supplementary Table 3). This finding is congruent with current literature of smaller case series[18]. Although there are isolated case reports of massive hemorrhage after ablation, they are unique cases that focus on extraneous factors contributing to the bleeding[24,25].

Biliary complications and bile leaks occur in 3% to 12% of hepatic resections, and tend to confer significant morbidity due to need for percutaneous drainage, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, or surgical intervention[26-28]. In our study there were 55 (5.7%) bile leaks occurrences, with no significant difference between patients who had ablation and those who underwent hepatectomy alone. Even after controlling for possible predictive covariates in the multivariate analysis, ablation did not significantly increase risk of bile leaks. Capussotti et al[26] reported specific resections such as a left hepatectomy including segment 1 or 4 as independent predictor of bile leak. However, in our study none of the covariates tested in the multivariate model, including type of resection, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, ablation, or operative approach were predictive of bile leaks.

There were 177 (12.1%) patients who developed an SSI in our study, the majority of which were organ space infections (8.1%). In patients undergoing percutaneous ablation alone without surgery the frequency of abscesses ranges between 1% and 4%[29-32]. Risk factors most predictive of abscess are transarterial chemoembolization and biliary abnormalities predisposing to ascending infections[33-35]. In our study we did not include pre-operative stent in our analysis. However, we performed multivariate analysis exploring other covariates that were predictive of organ space or any SSI. We found that Hispanic ethnicity had 3.97 and 2.68 times the odds of developing an organ space or any SSI respectively. Similarly having greater than 8 metastatic lesions increased the odds by 2.16 and 1.84 of an organ space or any SSI respectively. Interestingly a minimally invasive surgical approach was protective against any SSI when compared to open approach (OR = 0.36, P = 0.012) on univariate analysis, although on multivariate analysis it did not have a significant effect. Intraoperative ablation did not increase risk of either organ space or any SSI on univariate and multivariate analysis.

There are several limitations in this study that should be addressed. This is a cross-sectional retrospective study and is inferior to randomized control trials. Limitations of ACS-NSQIP data that are widely recognized and frequently described apply to this study and include scope of available variables, no mechanism of external data validation, and short-term 30-day outcomes[36,37]. For example, this study could be enhanced if the primary source of the metastatic NET was available in order to delineate pancreatic from carcinoid origin, as well as information about the location or size of the ablated tumor, number of ablated and resected tumors, or involvement of major vascular branches; however, these variables are not reported. Similarly, lacking is the reason surgeons chose to perform intraoperative ablation. Despite these limitations, NSQIP offers a robust database with a large number of patients sampled from across the country, useful for exploring rare pathologies such as metastatic NETs. The database is ideal for a study design exploring perioperative outcomes with specific interventions.

Liver metastases from NETs have an indolent course, often remaining undetected until hormonal oversecretion or symptoms from mass effect. Surgical resection remains the best therapy for both survival benefit and symptom control when complete irradiation is achieved. Ablation therapies are efficacious adjuncts to accomplish this goal. In this study we demonstrate that ablation is safe in the perioperative period and does not increase the risk of infection, bleeding, or bile leak in patients undergoing hepatic resection for neuroendocrine liver metastasis. Surgeons should not fear utilizing ablation concurrently with resection, even when attempting complete resection.