Rare Liver and Biliary Tract Diseases: Surgical Management

Aim of this publication is to offer readers a comprehensive surgical textbook that addresses exclusively rare liver and biliary diseases in pediatric and adult populations.

It will explain the origin of these types of diseases and provide guidance about their clinical manifestation, diagnosis, and treatment options. State-of-the-art research in the areas will be presented.

Written by a multidisciplinary team of world-renowned experts, this textbook addresses the knowledge gap surrounding these rare diseases. Many medical professionals—specialists as well as general practitioners—are unfamiliar with these conditions due to their rarity. This book is designed for medical clinicians, including medical students and residents, PhD candidates, and postdoctoral researchers. Multiple specialties, such as oncology, surgery, pediatrics, and endocrinology, will find this book an invaluable reference.

Professor Thilo Hackert is the vice chairman of the Department of General, Visceral and Transplantation Surgery at the University Hospital in Heidelberg (Director Prof.M. W. Büchler). After receiving his medical degree from the University of Heidelberg, he continued surgical education in Heidelberg and specialized on visceral surgery with a focus on pancreatic diseases, both clinically and scientifically. He became head of the section for pancreatic surgery in 2014. A special focus has recently been laid on robotic pancreatic surgery which has been introduced in Heidelberg in 2016 and is increasingly performed for all types of pancreatic resections. He has worked in committees for National Guidelines (chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer) as well as the European Guidelines for Cystic Tumors and is Council Member for Clinical Science in the European Pancreas Club.

Associate Professor Aiste Gulla is the Chief of the Solid Organ Transplantation Center at Vilnius Hospital Santaros Clinics. She received a medical degree from the University of Lithuanian Health Sciences, a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in the USA, and a Ph.D. in Medicine-Surgery from Vilnius University. She currently serves as the co-director of the Visceral Medicine and Transplantation Research Center at Vilnius University with the research focus on pancreas, liver and biliary system tumor single cell diagnostics, genetic drivers and microenvironment. Dr. Gulla recently implemented two surgical innovations in liver and pancreas patient care. Her center successfully adopted the use of a liver perfusion machine to improve liver transplantation outcomes and performed the first Pancreatic islet cell transplantation in the Baltics. Dr. Gulla is a recipient of K.Warren’s HPB fellowship award established by IHPBA. She is also a member of multiple national and international liver and pancreas transplantation committees and serves on the board of the international experts for the “Guide to the quality and safety of organs for transplantation (9th edition)” established by the Council of Europe, European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and HealthCare.