Impact of waiting time on hepatocellular carcinoma progression in patients undergoing curative tumour ablation

A feared consequence to delay in oncological treatment includes disease progression. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between waiting time for ablative therapy in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and the outcomes of local tumour progression, or new HCC foci.

Between January 2011 to July 2017, 215 patients with HCC underwent ablative (microwave and radiofrequency) procedures. Demographic information, and duration between diagnosis on imaging and ablative procedure were recorded. Follow-up imaging data were analysed to assess for development of either new HCC, or local tumour progression. The median waiting time to ablative therapy was 42 days, hence, patients were separated into two groups: wait time <42 days versus wait time ≥42 days. Simple cox regression was conducted to explore the association between wait time and the clinical outcomes of new HCC or local tumour progression. Survival analyses for outcomes of new HCC or local tumour progression were also compared between the two groups using log-rank test. All the statistical analyses were two sided and P value of less than 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.

Hazard ratio for local tumour progression was 1.002 (0.996, 1.007) P=0.579, while hazard ratio for new HCC foci was 1.002 (0.998, 1.005) P=0.373. There was no statistically significant difference when comparing the two groups (wait time <42 versus ≥42 days) for survival estimates for local tumour progression P=0.346, and for new HCC P=0.680.

This study demonstrates that delay in HCC ablative therapy is not associated with significant risk of local tumour progression, or new HCC foci.