Efficacy of Preoperative Transarterial Chemoembolization for Resectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma With Portal Vein Tumor Thrombosis: A Prospective Non-Randomized Comparative Study

With various improvements in interventional radiology, since the 2005 practice guidelines issued by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases , transcatheter arterial chemoembolization has become one of the available locoregional therapies for HCC. Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, which generally performed in intermediate-stage HCC patients, involves injection of an embolizing agent into the hepatic artery to deprive the tumor of its major nutrient source via embolization of the nutrient artery, resulting in ischemic necrosis of the tumor. To prevent intrahepatic recurrence due to portal vein invasion of the HCC tumor, therapeutic strategies such as preoperative TACE, and postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy have been tried. According to the latest and the most powerful evidence, however, preoperative TACE is not routinely recommended for patients undergoing hepatectomy to treat resectable HCC , and TACE may delay surgical treatment or decrease the resection volume of the liver, or it also may create a missed opportunity for surgical treatment.

Rather than subject all these patients to such an invasive procedure and put them at risk for missing opportunity for surgical treatment, it may be better to select optimal candidates to receive surgical resection. Recent studies have even shown favorable long-term survival outcomes of HR in well-selected cases of HCC with PVTT. About whether preoperative transarterial chemoembolization is available for the resectable hepatocellular carcinoma with portal vein tumor thrombi, so far, has hardly been reported.