Laparoscopic management of gallbladder-associated ectopic liver.

Abstract

Ectopic liver is a rare entity discussed infrequently in the surgical literature. Liver ectopia develops due to rests of liver parenchyma retained at various intraperitoneal or intrathoracic locations during migration of the liver proper during embryologic development. It is usually found during exploration for other diagnoses, commonly diseases of the biliary tree. We report a case in which a 3.7-cm mass associated with the fundus of the gallbladder was visualized preoperatively by computed tomography and identified histologically as ectopic liver after diagnostic laparoscopy and cholecystectomy with en bloc resection of the associated mass.