UC Irvine Healthcare’s hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery team treats a broad spectrum of liver, pancreas and bile duct illnesses, offering both surgical and nonsurgical therapies. Surgeons use novel clinical therapies to significantly increase the precision of treatment and minimize damage to surrounding healthy tissue. For example, laparoscopic, ultrasound-guided radiofrequency ablation uses high frequency radio waves to destroy liver tumors. Other therapies include TheraSphere and Sirtex, which involve injecting microscopic radioactive beads directly into tumors. As part of a clinical trial investigating novel immunosuppressive regimens, UC Irvine offers islet cell transplantation to patients with complicated type I diabetes or disabling chronic pancreatitis.

Patients with liver, pancreas, gallbladder and bile duct cancers are treated at the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center – a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center. As part of the only university hospital in Orange County, our surgical team not only has access to latest therapies available for liver and pancreatic cancers, but they also perform a high volume of liver resections, pancreatic surgeries and complex biliary bypasses for bile duct cancers. In fact, UC Irvine surgeons pioneered laparoscopic pancreatic surgeries and our physicians perform more of these surgeries than any institution on the west coast.