Clinical outcome of small hepatocellular carcinoma after different treatments: a meta-analysis

To compare clinical outcomes between surgical resection (RES) and nonsurgical-RES (nRES) ablation therapies for small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

MEDLINE, Embase and Cochrane Library databases were systematically searched for studies of RES and nRES treatments for small HCC between January 2003 and October 2013. The clinical outcome measures evaluated included overall survival rate, disease-free survival rate, adverse events, and local recurrence rate. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95%CIs were calculated using either the fixed effects model or random effects model. The χ(2) and I(2) tests were calculated to assess the heterogeneity of the data. Funnel plots were used to assess the risk of publication bias.

Our analysis included 12 studies that consisted of a total of 1952 patients (RES vs nRES), five studies that consisted of 701 patients [radiofrequency ablation (RFA) vs percutaneous ethanol injection (PEI)], and five additional studies [RFA vs RFA + transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE)] that all addressed the treatment of small HCC. For cases of RES vs nRES, there was no significant difference in the 1-year (OR = 0.99, 95%CI: 0.87-1.12, P = 0.85) or 3-year (OR = 0.97, 95%CI: 0.84-1.11, P = 0.98) overall survival rate; however, there was a significant increase in the RES group in the 5-year overall survival rate (OR = 0.81, 95%CI: 0.68-0.95, P = 0.01). The 1-year (OR = 0.94, 95%CI: 0.82-1.08, P = 0.37) and 5-year (OR = 0.99, 95%CI: 0.85-1.14, P = 0.85) disease-free survival rates showed no significant differences between the two groups. The 3-year disease-free survival rate (OR = 0.81, 95%CI: 0.69-0.96; P = 0.02) was higher in the RES group. For cases of RFA vs PEI, our data analysis indicated that RFA treatment was associated with significantly higher 2-year (OR = 0.76, 95%CI: 0.58-0.99, P = 0.043) and 3-year (OR = 0.73, 95%CI: 0.54-0.98, P = 0.039) overall survival rates; however, there were no significant differences in the 1-year (OR = 0.92, 95%CI: 0.72-1.17, P = 0.0502) overall survival rate or incidence of adverse events (OR = 1.84, 95%CI: 0.76-4.45, P = 0.173). For cases of RFA vs RFA+TACE, there were no significant differences in the 1-year (OR = 1.17, 95%CI: 0.88-1.56, P = 0.27) or 3-year (OR = 1.25, 95%CI: 0.90-1.73, P = 0.183) overall survival rate; however, the 5-year overall survival rate (OR = 3.19, 95%CI: 1.51-6.74, P = 0.002) in patients treated by RFA+TACE was higher than that treated by RFA alone.

Surgical resection is superior to nonsurgical ablation for the treatment of small HCC. Among the studies analyzed, RFA is the most efficacious single nonsurgical ablation treatment.