Significant advances in surgical techniques and relevant medium- and long-term outcomes over the past two decades have led to a substantial expansion in the indications for major liver resections. To support these outstanding results and to reduce perioperative complications, anesthesiologists must address and master key perioperative issues (preoperative assessment, proactive intraoperative anesthesia strategies, and implementation of the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery approach). Intensive care unit monitoring immediately following liver surgery remains a subject of active and often unresolved debate. Among postoperative complications, posthepatectomy liver failure (PHLF) occurs in different grades of severity (A-C) and frequency (9%-30%), and it is the main cause of 90-d postoperative mortality. PHLF, recently redefined with pragmatic clinical criteria and perioperative scores, can be predicted, prevented, or anticipated. This review highlights: (1) The systemic consequences of surgical manipulations anesthesiologists must respond to or prevent, to positively impact PHLF (a proactive approach); and (2) the maximal intensive treatment of PHLF, including artificial options, mainly based, so far, on Acute Liver Failure treatment(s), to buy time waiting for the recovery of the native liver or, when appropriate and in very selected cases, toward liver transplant. Such a clinical context requires a strong commitment to surgeons, anesthesiologists, and intensivists to work together, for a fruitful collaboration in a mandatory clinical continuum.

BACKGROUND: An important issue in robotic surgery is the training of urologists and the learning curve to perform a robot-assisted partial nephrectomy (RAPN), especially for those procedures that require vascular clamping.
METHODS: We retrospectively enrolled 333 patients, undergoing RAPN in the period between 01/2014 and 12/2020. Surgical complexity, surgery duration, perioperative complications, and clamping were evaluated for each patient. Comparisons were made between an experienced surgeon and 3 urologists with initial experience in robotic surgery.
RESULTS: Total number of RAPN was 333, of wich 172 were performed by the chief and 142 by the team. Analyzing the data, after an initial training in robotic surgery, it\'s possible to perform surgery of medium complexity (RENAL score 6-7) after 15 procedures performed in total independence. To proceed to high complexity tumors (RENAL score 8-9) with possible vascular clamping and warm ischemia time <25 minutes at least 25 completely independent procedures are required. There were no significant differences in the comparisons regarding the duration of the procedures (p = 0.19), complications (p = 0.44) and positive margins (p = 0.96).
CONCLUSIONS: Robotic training for complex procedures, with low intra and postoperative complication rates, acceptable positive margin rates and sustainable cost-effective durations, requires a minimum number of medium complexity procedures, which in our study we have identified as 25 procedures, considering the initial ability in simple procedures of our 3 surgeons in training.

BACKGROUND: While several recent studies investigated the influence of statins on survival outcomes in prostate cancer (PCa) patients on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), definitive conclusions are still missing. The present systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to develop an overarching framework for the association of statins use and survival outcomes in PCa patients who receive ADT.
METHODS: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature assessing the survival outcomes for statin compared to non-statin users in PCa patients who received ADT. We searched PubMed and Web of Science for studies published before March 1, 2021. We used the random effect model in the presence of heterogeneity and the fixed-effects model in the absence of heterogeneity per the I 2 statistic. We did two meta-analyses; the primary meta-analysis was accomplished for articles reporting cancer-specific survival (CSS) as an outcome. A secondary meta-analysis was completed for articles reporting overall survival (OS) as an outcome.
RESULTS: Ten studies were eligible for inclusion. Nine studies included in the first meta-analysis comprising 136,285 patients showed no statistically significant difference in CSS (HR 0.77; 95% CI 0.49-1.21) between statin users and non-users in PCa patients who received ADT. In four studies included in the second meta-analysis comprising 95,032 patients, statin users had a significantly better OS compared to non-users (HR 0.67; 95% CI 0.62-0.73).
CONCLUSIONS: Although the combination of statins and ADT in PCa patients significantly improves OS, it seems not to be through an effect on cancer-specific factors.

Vascular clamping often causes injury to arterial tissue, leading to a cascade of cellular and extracellular events. A reliable in silico prediction of these processes following vascular injury could help us to increase our understanding thereof, and eventually optimize surgical techniques or drug delivery to minimize the amount of long-term damage. However, the complexity and interdependency of these events make translation into constitutive laws and their numerical implementation particularly challenging. We introduce a finite element simulation of arterial clamping taking into account acute endothelial denudation, damage to extracellular matrix, and smooth muscle cell loss. The model captures how this causes tissue inflammation and deviation from mechanical homeostasis, both triggering vascular remodeling. A number of cellular processes are modeled, aiming at restoring this homeostasis, i.e., smooth muscle cell phenotype switching, proliferation, migration, and the production of extracellular matrix. We calibrated these damage and remodeling laws by comparing our numerical results to in vivo experimental data of clamping and healing experiments. In these same experiments, the functional integrity of the tissue was assessed through myograph tests, which were also reproduced in the present study through a novel model for vasodilator and -constrictor dependent smooth muscle contraction. The simulation results show a good agreement with the in vivo experiments. The computational model was then also used to simulate healing beyond the duration of the experiments in order to exploit the benefits of computational model predictions. These results showed a significant sensitivity to model parameters related to smooth muscle cell phenotypes, highlighting the pressing need to further elucidate the biological processes of smooth muscle cell phenotypic switching in the future.

BACKGROUND: To date, the incidence and clinical relevance of arterial stenosis at clamp sites after femoropopliteal bypass surgery is unknown.
METHODS: Ninety-four patients underwent a femoropopliteal bypass in which the arterial inflow and outflow clamp sites were controlled by the Fogarty-Soft-Inlay clamp and marked with an hemoclip. The number of pre-existing atherosclerotic segments, clamp force, and clamp time were recorded and the occurrence of a stenosis at the clamp site was determined.
RESULTS: After a mean follow-up of 83 months, a significant stenosis was confirmed at 23 of the 178 clamp sites (12.9%; 95% confidence interval 8.4 to 18.8). The mean number of pre-existing atherosclerotic segments (P = .28) and the mean clamp force (P = .55) was similar between the groups with and without a stenosis. There was a significant difference regarding clamp time between the group with and without a stenosis (38 minutes and 26 minutes, P = .001).
CONCLUSIONS: Arterial clamping, even with the Fogarty-Soft-Inlay clamp, can lead to clamp stenosis and seems to be related to the duration of clamping, but not to pre-existent atherosclerotic burden.

The use of vascular occlusion during liver resection is still a matter of debate. The aim of this review was to assess the advantages and disadvantages of portal triad occlusion as a protective strategy during elective liver resection and liver transplantation. Newer strategies such as pharmacological preconditioning are also discussed. A systematic literature search was conducted to detect randomized controlled trials assessing the effectiveness and safety of portal triad clamping, ischaemic preconditioning and pharmacological preconditioning during liver surgery. Vascular clamping cannot be systematically recommended. When used, portal triad clamping is associated with a tendency towards reduced blood loss and blood transfusion without having an impact on morbidity. Intermittent clamping appears to be better tolerated than continuous clamping, especially in patients with chronic liver disease. Ischaemic preconditioning before continuous portal triad clamping reduces reperfusion injury after warm ischaemia, particularly in steatotic patients. Ischaemic preconditioning has unclear effects in transplantation and there is currently no evidence to support or refute the use of ischaemic preconditioning in the donor. There are emerging alternative conditioning strategies, including the use of volatile anaesthetics, which may provide new and easily applicable therapeutic options to protect the liver.