As the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has rapidly spread over the world, the World Health Organization has ...declared the outbreak of COVID-19 an international public health emergency. Besides typical respiratory symptoms and signs of COVID-19, digestive symptoms and liver injury have been frequently reported during the course of the disease. In this review, we summarized the recent studies reporting of gastrointestinal and liver manifestations during the course of COVID-19. Digestive symptoms, including anorexia, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, are not uncommon in patients with COVID-19, and in some cases digestive symptoms may occur in the absence of any respiratory symptoms. Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 could be detected in the stool of infected patients, implicating the possibility of fecal-oral transmission. Attention should also be paid to monitor liver function during the course of COVID-19, especially in patients with higher disease severity.
Background and Aim
The severity of liver dysfunction in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is often estimated with Child–Turcotte–Pugh (CTP) classification or model for end‐stage liver disease (MELD) ...score. We aim to investigate the performance of albumin‐bilirubin (ALBI) and platelet‐albumin‐bilirubin (PALBI) grade, which are recently reported to be simple and objective measurements for liver reserve in HCC.
Methods
Between 2002 and 2014, consecutive 3182 HCC patients were enrolled to follow up their survival. The area under receiver‐operator‐characteristic curve (AUC) was calculated to test the discriminatory powers over 1‐year, 3‐year, and 5‐year survival.
Results
Significant survival differences were found across all ALBI and PALBI grades (both P < 0.001). The majority (73%) of patients were CTP class A. Within CTP class A, ALBI revealed two prognostic groups while PALBI segregated three prognostic groups. The PABLI grade also identified three different survival groups for patients undergoing resection, ablation, and chemoembolization. Both ALBI and PALBI grade were capable of discerning survival among different HCC stages. The PALBI grade had significantly higher AUC compared with CTP classification and ALBI grade at 1, 3, and 5 years. For CTP class A patients, the PALBI grade was also associated with significantly higher AUC compared with ALBI grade at 1‐year and 3‐year intervals. The MELD score has the lowest AUC compared with other systems.
Conclusions
Both ALBI and PALBI grade are adequate models to assess liver dysfunction in HCC. The PALBI grade is consistently better in all patients, in patients with minimally decreased liver function, and in patients receiving different aggressive therapies.
Background & Aims
Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is a standard treatment for Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage B hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the outcome varied. This study ...aimed to develop a model to predict the outcome of TACE in HCC patients.
Methods
Consecutive 570 treatment‐naïve BCLC stage B HCC patients undergoing TACE as the initial treatment from 2007 to 2016 were retrospectively enrolled. Factors associated with survival were analysed. Patients undergoing TACE from 2007 to 2011 constituted the training cohort (n = 293), while patients undergoing TACE from 2012 to 2016 constituted the validation cohort (n = 277). Homogeneity and corrected Akaike information criterion (AICc) were compared between each prognostic model.
Results
A total of 1796 TACE sessions were performed for the 570 patients during the median follow‐up period of 18.3 months. By multivariate analysis, beyond up‐to‐11 criteria (hazard ratio HR = 1.694, P < .001), alpha‐foetoprotein >200 ng/mL (HR = 1.771, P < .001) and albumin‐bilirubin (ALBI) grade 2 or 3 (HR = 1.817, P < .001) were independent predictors of overall survival (OS) in the training cohort. An ALBI‐TAE model based on the three independent predictors of OS from the training cohort was developed to classify HCC patients into four subgroups. The performance of the ALBI‐TAE model was superior to other prognostic models with lowest AICc values and highest homogeneity in both the training and validation datasets as well as the overall cohort.
Conclusions
Albumin‐bilirubin grade is an important factor associated with survival in BCLC stage B HCC patients undergoing TACE. ALBI‐TAE model can be applied to select patients who can get most benefit from TACE.
Background/Aim
Patients with cirrhosis have poor outcomes once decompensation occurs; however, we lack adequate predictors of decompensation. To use a national claim database to compare the ...predictive accuracy of seven models for decompensation and hospitalization in patients with compensated cirrhosis.
Methods
We defined decompensation as ascites, hepatic encephalopathy, hepato-renal syndrome, and variceal bleeding. Patients without decompensation at the time of cirrhosis diagnosis were enrolled from 2001 to 2015. Patients with hepatitis B and/or C were grouped as viral cirrhosis. We compared the predictive accuracy of models with the AUC (area under the curve) and c-statistic. The cumulative incidence of decompensation and incidence risk ratios of hospitalization were calculated with the Fine–Gray competing risk and negative binomial models, respectively.
Results
A total of 3722 unique patients were enrolled with a mean follow-up time of 524 days. The mean age was 59 (standard deviation 12), and the majority were male (55%) and white (65%). Fifty-three percent of patients had non-viral cirrhosis. Sixteen and 20 percent of patients with non-viral and viral cirrhosis, respectively, developed decompensation (
P
= 0.589). The FIB-4 model had the highest 3-year AUC (0.73) and overall c-statistic (0.692) in patients with non-viral cirrhosis. The ALBI-FIB-4 model had the best 1-year (AUC = 0.741), 3-year (AUC = 0.754), and overall predictive accuracy (c-statistic = 0.681) in patients with viral cirrhosis. The MELD score had the best predictive power for hospitalization in both non-viral and viral patients.
Conclusions
FIB-4-based models provide more accurate prediction for decompensation, and the MELD model has the best predictive ability of hospitalization.
Portal vein tumor thrombosis (PVTT) commonly occurs in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Patients with PVTT usually have an aggressive disease course, decreased liver function reserve, ...limited treatment options, higher recurrence rates after treatment, and, therefore, worse overall survival. Among untreated HCC patients with PVTT, the median overall survival has been reported as low as 2 to 4 months. Historically, many aspects of PVTT have impacted the theoretical and practical safety and efficacy of treatment, for example, disordered blood flow and associated impairment of liver function, heat-sink effects of blood flow in the area of the PVTT, and risk of recurrence due to tumor location in the blood vessel. The current Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer staging system categorizes HCC patients with PVTT as advanced stage, for which the standard of care is targeted therapy with sorafenib. However, sorafenib is associated with only marginal benefits among patients with PVTT. First-line lenvatinib, which was shown to be noninferior to sorafenib, excluded patients with main portal trunk invasion. Regorafenib and nivolumab, an immune-based therapy, were recently approved in the United States for second-line therapy after sorafenib. Preliminary results for cabozantinib suggest a benefit in the second-/third-line after sorafenib failure. In addition, rapid advances in many fields (surgery, interventional radiology, nuclear medicine, and immunotherapy) have increased the potential treatment options for the management of this complex disease entity. A large portion of the emerging evidence focuses on the broader category of advanced HCC of which PVTT is a subgroup. While many of these studies show promising results, the efficacy among PVTT patients requires validation in prospective studies. Real-world data may help fill the evidence gap for patients not eligible for clinical trials due to common hepatic function requirements. The variety of new treatment advances for the heterogeneous and complex disease entity of HCC with PVTT means that personalized, multidisciplinary management may be necessary to achieve optimal outcomes. In this narrative review, we summarize the evolving management strategies for patients with HCC and PVTT.
Purpose To construct a nomogram with the albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grade to assess the long-term outcomes of patients with early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after radiofrequency ablation ...(RFA). Materials and Methods This retrospective study was approved by the institutional review board, and informed consent was waived. We studied 622 treatment-naïve patients with HCC according to the Milan criteria who subsequently underwent RFA from 2002 to 2013. Baseline characteristics were collected to identify the risk factors for determination of poor overall survival after RFA. The multivariate Cox proportional hazards model based on significant prognostic factors of overall survival was used to construct the nomogram. Results After a median follow-up time of 35.7 months, 190 patients had died. The cumulative 5- and 10-year overall survival rates were 63.1% and 48.7%, respectively. Stratified according to ALBI grade, the cumulative 5- and 10-year survival rates were 80.0% and 67.9% for patients with grade 1, respectively, and 48.6% and 35.1% for those with grades 2-3, respectively (P < .001). Multivariate analysis results showed that patient age older than 65 years, a prothrombin time international normalized ratio greater than 1.1, α-fetoprotein level greater than 20 ng/mL, multiple tumors, and ALBI grade 2 or 3 were associated with overall mortality. A nomogram was developed on the basis of these five variables. Internal validation with 200 bootstrapped sample sets had a good concordance index of 0.770 (95% confidence interval: 0.633, 0.876). Conclusion This simple nomogram based on the ALBI grade offers personalized long-term survival data for patients with early-stage HCC who undergo RFA.
RSNA, 2017 Online supplemental material is available for this article.
Background/Aims Hepatitis B virus (HBV) levels correlate with the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the role of viral load in HCC recurrence after tumor resection remains unclear. ...Herein we aimed to investigate the role of viral load in HCC recurrence following tumor resection. Methods From 1990 to 2002, 193 HBV-related HCC patients who underwent tumor resection in Taipei Veterans General Hospital were enrolled. Serum HBV DNA level and mutations were analyzed for association with early and late recurrence, together with other clinical variables. Results During a follow-up of 58.2 ± 44 months, 134 patients had HCC recurrence. Multivariate analysis showed that multinodularity (Hazard ratio HR, 95% confidence interval CI; 2.232, 1.021–4.878), macroscopic venous invasion (4.693, 1.645–13.391), AFP >20 ng/ml (3.891, 1.795–8.475), and cut margin ⩽1 cm (3.333, 1.487–7.470) were correlated with early recurrence (within two years of operation) of HCC. In addition, multivariate analysis determined that Ishak hepatic inflammatory activity >6 (4.658, 1.970–11.017), multinodularity (3.266, 1.417–7.526), ICG-15 >10% (2.487, 1.095–5.650) and HBV DNA level >106 copies/ml (2.548, 1.040–6.240) were significantly associated with late recurrence (>two years after resection). Patients with high viral loads tended to have higher Ishak inflammatory (7.00 ± 3.07 vs. 5.33 ± 2.96, p = 0.001) and fibrosis scores (4.17 ± 2.01 vs. 3.20 ± 2.41, p = 0.007) than those with lower loads. Conclusions Tumor factors were associated with early HCC recurrence while high viral loads and hepatic inflammatory activity were associated with late recurrence. Pre- and post-operative antiviral and anti-inflammatory therapies may be crucial in reducing late recurrence.
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