Modern surgery started at around the 19th century when our pioneers started to solve the problems brought in by surgery:pain,infection and excessive blood loss.Since then,surgery has advanced rapidly,and it gradually develops towards two extremes:ultra-major operations and minimally invasive/non-invasive surgery.The ability for surgeons to carry out ultra-major operations which was previously considered to be impossible would depend on major advances in better understanding of anatomy,physiology and pathology,advances in other fields of medicine to provide improved perioperative care to patients,and advances in surgical equipment and technologies.Hepatic surgery,like any other fields in surgery,has developed rapidly,and is also developing towards these two extremes.In the 2000s,when different types of liver allogenic transplantation techniques have been invented,a lot of liver surgeons thought that this extreme end of liver surgery has probably come to an end.The next advancement would probably be xenotrans-plantation which requires major advances in immunosuppression and molecular medicine to make it happen,but not major advances in surgical techniques.Then came ex vivo liver resection and autotransplantation and their further developments.Another extreme development is towards minimally invasive surgery,which includes interventional,laparoscopic and robotic surgery;and from using multiple ports to single-port or through natural orifice surgery.Techniques using non-invasive surgery to treat patients with liver diseases are just emerging with a lot of space to further develop.All these advances in surgery have only one goal,and the goal is to achieve the best surgical treatment results for patients with the minimal adverse side-effects.