Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 23, 2025
Author Spotlight: Investigating Immune Cell Dynamics in the Tumor Microenvironment — Challenges and Innovations in Cancer Prognosis
Published on: April 12, 2024
Sarcopenia with systemic inflammation can predict survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma undergoing
Hanbaro Kim1, Han Zo Choi2, Ji Min Choi3
1Department of Surgery, Hallym University College of Medicine, Hallym University Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital, Chuncheon-si, South Korea.
Background:
This study aimed to examine the prognostic significance of sarcopenia combined with systemic inflammation in patients who underwent curative hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
Methods:
Between January 2010 and July 2019, we identified 159 patients with HCC who underwent curative hepatectomy at three institutional centers. We retrospectively analyzed clinicopathological outcomes, surgical outcomes, platelet lymphocyte ratio (PLR) as a systemic inflammatory marker, and computed tomography (CT)-assessed sarcopenia at the third lumbar vertebra level (L3).
Results:
Sarcopenia was noted in 74 (46.5%) of 159 patients and was significantly associated with male sex, low body mass index (BMI), and high PLR. In the multivariate analysis, sarcopenia [hazard ratio (HR): 2.127, P=0.026] and high PLR (HR: 1.971, P=0.038) were associated with a decrease in overall survival (OS) but not in recurrence-free survival (RFS). The combination of sarcopenia and PLR status stratified the 5-year OS into 82.0% (non-sarcopenia and a low PLR), 68.3% (sarcopenia or a high PLR), and 44.4% (sarcopenia and a high PLR) (P=0.001). In the multivariate analysis, "sarcopenia and a high PLR" and "sarcopenia or a high PLR" were revealed to be significant predictors of OS (HR: 4.300, P=0.001 and HR: 2.723, P=0.010, respectively).
Conclusions:
Sarcopenia and high PLR were significantly associated with poor OS. The combination of these two factors may be useful for predicting survival of patients with HCC undergoing curative hepatectomy.
