Liver metastases from non-gastrointestinal non-neuroendocrine tumours: review of the literature

Liver resection is integrated in the oncological surgical management of metastatic gastrointestinal and neuroendocrine tumours. However, the good prognosis reached in these cases has not been obtained for metastatic tumours of other histological types. In this review, we analysed the published case reports and series of hepatectomies in patients with metastatic breast cancer, melanoma, sarcoma, genitourinary tumours, pulmonary and adrenocortical tumours. From the reported data the surgical resection of oligometastases yields good results in terms of improved survival, in particular when the disease-free time period is longer than 1 year. Hepatic resection can be a valid surgical strategy to obtain a survival benefit in patients with liver metastases from non-gastrointestinal, non-neuroendocrine tumours. However, a careful patient selection is needed in order to obtain a real survival benefit; patients with a good performance status, with a disease-free period longer than 1 year and with oligometastases may obtain the best advantage from this approach.