The liver is very close to the pancreas, and they are neighbors, which makes it possible for pancreatic tumors to invade the liver in many different ways. Right now, the metastatic liver tumors are especially complex as they somehow grow around the hepatic portal artery, veins, and various other conduits.
If the tumor needs to be removed, the blood vessels must be severed along with it, and these vessels must then be reconstructed. Of course, such intricate tumors cannot be excised internally, hence the existence of ex-vivo resection techniques.
Now, Yang Ping views the liver and the tumor as one entity, without intending to separate them internally. The separation of the tumor will be handled externally. For now, Yang Ping's goal is to separate this "organ+tumor" whole from the surrounding normal tissue.
Even so, this task is not easily accomplished because the tumor ultimately encompasses the blood vessels and crawls towards the inferior vena cava.
