ObjectiveTo compare efficacy of laparoscopic or open hepatectomy in benign liver tumors patients with different difficult operations. MethodsAccording to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the patients with benign liver tumors who underwent hepatectomy in the Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University from September 2014 to March 2021 were collected. The enrolled patients were assigned into low, medium, and high difficulties by the Hasegawa liver resection surgical difficulty score model, then the patients were matched by propensity score matching. The liver function and inflammatory indexes, intraoperative bleeding, operative time, total hospital stay, postoperative complications, and hospitalization expenses of patients with benign liver tumors after laparoscopic (laparoscope group) or open (open group) hepatectomy were compared. ResultsA total of 209 patients who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were enrolled in this study. According to the Hasegawa criteria, there were 59, 89, and 61 patients with low, medium, and high difficulties respectively. After 1∶1 propensity score matching, 18, 34, and 14 patients in the laparoscope group and open group were matched respectively. There were no statistic differences in the baseline data between the laparoscope group and open group (P>0.05). ① For the patients with low and medium difficulties, compared with the open group, the different values of alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, white blood cell count, and neutrophil percentage were lower (P<0.05), the intraoperative bleeding and total hospital stay were less or shorter (P<0.05), and the albumin were higher (P<0.05) in the laparoscope group. There were no statistic differences in these indexes among the patients with high difficulty (P>0.05). ② Compared with the open group, the operative time of the laparoscope group was shorter in the patients with low difficulty (P<0.05) and longer in the patients with high difficulty (P<0.05), and there was no statistic difference in patients with medium difficulty (P>0.05). ③ The postoperative complications had no statistic differences between the two groups for the patients with low and high difficulties (P>0.05), while which in the laparoscope group were lower than in the open group for the patients with medium difficulty (P<0.05). ④ The hospitalization expenses of the laparoscope group was higher than the open group for the patients with high difficulty (P<0.05), while which had no statistic differences between the two groups for the patients with low and medium difficulties (P>0.05). ⑤ The total hospital stay of the laparoscope group was shorter than the open group (P<0.05) no matter which difficult operation.ConclusionsAccording to results of this study, laparoscopic hepatectomy has more obvious advantages as compared with open hepatectomy for patients with low or medium difficulty, which could greatly shorten hospital stay and accelerate rehabilitation of patients. Even for patients with high difficulty, laparoscopic hepatectomy still shows an advantage of shortening hospital stay.