Surgical Resection Improves Survival in BCLC Stage C Hepatocellular Carcinoma

the Cancer Therapy Advisor take:

Surgical resection provides significantly better long-term survival compared to transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) in patients with advanced Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage C hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), according to a study published in the Journal of Surgical Oncology.

Taiwanese researchers led by Po-Hong Lui, MD, of the Taipei Veterans General Hospital examined patients being treated for their HCC, 264 with surgical resection and 389 with TACE. Among these patients, 163 matched pairs were identified from each arm by propensity score analysis in order to compare long-term survival.

They found that the group that underwent surgical resection had better liver function reserve than the TACE group, and demonstrated better long-term survival. After matched propensity modeling, baseline characteristics were similar between the two groups.

In addition, with Cox proportional modeling, patients who underwent TACE had an increased risk of mortality compared to those who underwent surgical resection.

“Multidisciplinary approaches for these patients and further amendments to the BCLC classification scheme are required,” the authors concluded.