Korean J Hepatol.  2011 Sep;17(3):189-198. 10.3350/kjhep.2011.17.3.189.

The retrospective cohort study for survival rate in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma receiving radiotherapy or palliative care

• Eun HS
• Kim MJ
• Kim HJ
• Ko KH
• Moon HS
• Lee ES
• Kim SH
• Lee HY
• Lee BS

• KMID: 1025198
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3350/kjhep.2011.17.3.189

Abstract

BACKGROUND/AIMS
This study was conducted to investigate the assessment of treatment efficacy of radiotherapy (RT) and other therapeutic modalities compared with palliative care only for treatment with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
METHODS
From 2002 to 2010, based on the case of 47 patients with advanced HCC, we have investigated each patients' Child-Pugh's class, ECOG performance, serum level of alpha fetoprotein and other baseline characteristics that is considered to be predictive variables and values for prognosis of HCC. Out of overall patients, the 29 patients who had received RT were selected for one group and the 18 patients who had received only palliative care were classified for the other. The analysis in survival between the two groups was done to investigate the efficacy of RT.
RESULTS
Under the analysis in survival, the mean survival time of total patients group was revealed between 30.1 months and 45.9 months in RT group, while it was 4.8 months in palliative care group, respectively. In the univariate analysis for overall patients, there were significant factors which affected survival rate like as follows: ECOG performance, Child-Pugh's class, the tumor size, the type of tumor, alpha fetoprotein, transarterial chemoembolization, and RT. The regressive analysis in multivariate Cox for total patients. No treatment under radiotherapy and high level of Child-Pugh's class grade were independent predictors of worse overall survival rate in patients. In contrast, for the subset analysis of the twenty-nine patients treated with radiotherapy, the higher serum level of alpha fetoprotein was an independent predictors of worse overall survival rate in patients.
CONCLUSIONS
We found that the survival of patients with advanced HCC was better with radiotherapy than with palliative care. Therefore, radiotherapy could be a good option for in patients with advanced HCC.

Keyword

Hepatocellular carcinoma; Radiotherapy; Survival rate; Alpha-fetoprotein; Child-Pugh class

MeSH Terms

Aged
Carcinoma, Hepatocellular/mortality/pathology/*radiotherapy
Chemoembolization, Therapeutic
Cohort Studies
Female
Humans
Liver Neoplasms/mortality/pathology/*radiotherapy
Male
Middle Aged
*Palliative Care
Prognosis
Retrospective Studies
Severity of Illness Index
Survival Analysis
alpha-Fetoproteins/analysis