Fig 1. Enrollment and randomization.

Forty-six patients were enrolled for this study. In five patients liver resection was not performed due to tumor progression. The remaining 41 patients were randomized intraoperative and assigned to CUSA resection (n = 21) or stapler hepatectomy (n = 20). One patient from the CUSA group was excluded after randomization, as the patient emerged to be non-resectable.