Surgery for hepatocellular carcinoma

Today there is an array of therapeutic modalities available for the patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, surgery, be it resection or transplantation, offers the only hope of long-term disease-free survival. Unfortunately, because the majority of HCC in Asia is associated with cirrhosis, surgical resection is restricted to only a small proportion of these patients. However, in selected candidates resection may offer a 5-year survival of up to 70%. With the clinical application of adult-to-adult living donor liver transplantation, an increasing number of patients with small HCC and decompensating cirrhosis are undergoing transplantation.