Sorafenib combined with hepatectomy in patients with intermediate-stage and advanced hepatocellular carcinoma

INTRODUCTION: Guidelines based on the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) classification system recommend that hepatic resection should be performed only in patients in BCLC stage A. Patients with stage B or stage C should receive palliative or no treatment. However, actual clinical practice varies, and a recent analysis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) surgery outcomes in high volume surgical centers throughout the world concluded that hepatectomy can provide survival benefit for selected patients in all three BCLC stages. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of adjuvant sorafenib after hepatic resection in patients with intermediate-stage and advanced HCC. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In a retrospective case-control study involving 81 patients with intermediate/advanced HCC, 27 who received sorafenib 400 mg BID (median duration 7.33 months) following hepatic resection were compared with a matched group of 54 patients who received hepatic resection only. Overall survival (OS) and time to recurrence (TTR) were evaluated over a median follow-up time of 14.5 months. RESULTS: The median OS was significantly longer in the surgery+sorafenib group than in the surgery-only group (18.6 vs. 11.9 months, respectively; p = 0.014). However, the median TTR did not differ significantly between the 2 groups (p = 0.291). CONCLUSIONS: Sorafenib is effective as adjuvant therapy after liver resection in intermediate-stage and advanced HCC, and can be considered a viable treatment option following surgery in such patients.