ASO Author Reflections: Salvage Liver Transplant for Recurrent Hepatocellular Carcinoma After Treatments With Curative Intent

Excerpt

Patients with early stages of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are eligible for curative-intent treatments with radiofrequency ablation (RFA), liver resection (LR), or liver transplantation (LT).1 Recurrence of HCC is diagnosed in 80% to 90% of patients treated with LR or RFA.2 Although LT offers the best treatment method, with a recurrence rate as low as 5%,3 because of organ shortage, alternative curative treatments such as LR and RFA are offered as first-line treatment methods.1 When HCC recurs, patients may qualify for salvage liver transplantation (SLT).4 Previous studies have reported outcomes of SLT after recurrent HCC with differing results.5,6 These studies included a heterogenous patient population and did not distinguish between patients with transplantation for HCC recurrence and those with transplantation secondary to liver failure. Furthermore, although several studies have analyzed the outcomes of SLT after curative LR, few have analyzed SLT after RFA.2 The current study compared the outcome of SLT for recurrent HCC following RFA or LR with the outcome of patients who had a primary LT (PLT) without previous treatment of HCC.7 …