Caudate hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a poorer prognosis than HCC originating from other lobes, due to its proximity to the portal trunk and inferior vena cava, which facilitate intrahepatic and systemic spread early in the disease. Hepatic resection is considered, in principle, to be the first choice treatment. In order to improve surgical outcome, it is necessary to evaluate the potential risk factors affecting long-term survival and to establish guidelines for the appropriate use of hepatectomy for caudate lobectomy.
A research article to be published on March 7, 2010 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. This research group, lead by Dr. Jia-Mei Yang and his colleagues in the Second Military Medical University, retrospectively evaluated 114 consecutive patients who underwent hepatic resection for caudate lobe HCC and evaluated the influences of common clinicopathologic variables on recurrence and long-term survival.
They found that hepatectomy was an effective treatment for caudate lobe HCC, and that subsegmental location of the tumor, the presence of liver cirrhosis and the size of the surgical margin affected long-term survival.
This study investigated an important and interesting issue. The results suggest that surgeons should pay more attention to the subsegmental location of the tumor, and that extended hepatectomy should be used when possible in order to achieve adequate intraoperative tumor margins, and so improve long-term survival after surgery.
Reference: Liu P, Yang JM, Niu WY, Kan T, Xie F, Li DQ, Wang Y, Zhou YM. Prognostic factors in the surgical treatment of caudate lobe hepatocellular carcinoma. World J Gastroenterol 2010; 16(9): 1123-1128 http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/16/1123.asp
Correspondence to: Jia-Mei Yang, MD, Chief, Department of Special Treatment and Liver Transplantation, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200438, China. jmyang@smmu.edu.cn
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About World Journal of Gastroenterology
World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG), a leading international journal in gastroenterology and hepatology, has established a reputation for publishing first class research on esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, viral hepatitis, colorectal cancer, and H pylori infection and provides a forum for both clinicians and scientists. WJG has been indexed and abstracted in Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch) and Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, Index Medicus, MEDLINE and PubMed, Chemical Abstracts, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Abstracts Journals, Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology and Hepatology, CAB Abstracts and Global Health. ISI JCR 2008 IF: 2.081. WJG is a weekly journal published by WJG Press. The publication dates are the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day of every month. WJG is supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 30224801 and No. 30424812, and was founded with the name of China National Journal of New Gastroenterology on October 1, 1995, and renamed WJG on January 25, 1998.
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World Journal of Gastroenterology