Sex differences in disease presentation, surgical and oncological outcome of liver resection for primary and metastatic liver tumors—A retrospective multicenter study

BACKGROUND: Sex differences are becoming of rising interest in many fields of medicine. It remains unknown whether sex has a role in postoperative and long-term outcome after hepatic resection (HR). The aim of this study was to investigate sex differences in disease presentation, surgical and oncological outcome after curative HR. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of 1010 patients who underwent HR between 2005 and 2018 at two tertiary hospitals in Austria. Demographics and survival data were obtained from a prospectively maintained database. Univariate analysis was used to identify sex differences for the entire cohort and for sub-cohorts. Disease-free- and overall survival was assessed by the Kaplan-Meier estimate and results were compared by log-rank tests. RESULTS: 436 females and 574 males were analyzed. Women were younger (p<0.001), had less liver cirrhosis (p<0.001), cardiac comorbidities (p<0.001), diabetes (28 (p<0.001) and obesity (p<0.001). Type of HR and surgical management did not vary by sex. Ninety-day morbidity (p = 0.179) and -mortality (p = 0.888) were comparable. In patients with malignant disease, no differences in disease-free- and overall survival was observed, neither for the entire cohort nor for the subgroups according to tumor entity or type of resection. Only in HCC patients, females showed an inferior OS (p = 0.029). CONCLUSION: This study delivers new insights on the impact of sex differences in liver surgery. Despite the fact that male patients have a higher incidence of preoperative morbidities, we did not observe specific disparities in terms of immediate postoperative as well as long term oncological outcome between sexes.