Fig. 1

Patient flow diagram. A total of 119 consecutive patients underwent liver resections for CLM in the study period. Thirty-one patients were excluded from the study because of macroscopic residual disease. Of these 31, 7 underwent R2 liver resection and 24 underwent R0 liver resection with concomitant extrahepatic disease at the time of liver resection. Therefore, the study cohort consisted of 88 patients with limited liver disease who underwent curative liver resection: 34 with initially resectable synchronous disease (synchronous group), 38 with initially resectable metachronous disease (metachronous group), and 16 with initially unresectable converted disease (conversion group). CLM colorectal liver metastasis