Background: The higher recurrence rate of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) needs to be urgently controlled. However, definitive markers are lacking for patients with recurrence of HCC after undergoing minimal invasive therapies—local ablation combined with transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE).
Materials and methods: Demographic and clinicopathological data of 234 subjects receiving combined therapies as the initial treatment were retrospectively analyzed. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis was used to assess independent risk factors of recurrence. Selected variables were divided into low-, intermediate-, and high-risk groups of recurrence according to the scores assigned to them based on their respective hazard ratio (HR) values. The area under the curve (AUC) was used to evaluate the predictive value of the scoring system. Cumulative recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival rates were calculated by the Kaplan–Meier estimator. Finally, a correlation analysis was performed on demographic and clinical data among the three groups.
Results: The AUC of predicting 1-, 2-, and 3-year recurrence rates was 0.680, 0.728, and 0.709, respectively. The cumulative RFS rate in the low-risk group at 1, 2, and 3 years after undergoing combined treatments was 4%, 12.2%, and 30.6%, while that in the intermediate-risk group and high-risk group was 23.4%, 51.6%, 60.0%, and 47.3%, 78.2%, 83.6%, respectively. Gamma-glutamyltransferase (γ-GT), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and total cholesterol (TC) levels among the three groups were statistically different.
Conclusion: The scoring system of the present study for patients with the recurrence of HCC after undergoing TACE combined with local ablation may help physicians make a reasonable clinical decision, providing ideal management for diagnosis and treatment.
Keywords: ablation, hepatocellular carcinoma, transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, scoring system, recurrence