Efficacy of sorafenib in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma after resection: a meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: The prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma remains poor even after curative resection and it has no effective adjuvant therapy. AIM: This meta-analysis aimed to assess efficacy of sorafenib as adjuvant therapy for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma after resection. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A systematic search was conducted of Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Chinese Wanfang database, Chinese biological and medical database, China National Knowledgeand the Internet, data from 5 studies that included 296 participants were analyzed. The primary outcome was overall survival. Secondary outcomes included recurrence rate and mortality rate. RESULTS: In the comparison of sorafenib versus control, no significant difference in overall survival (hazard ratio 1.39, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.71–2.74, P = 0.34) or recurrence rate [risk ratio (RR) 0.81, 95% CI; 0.65–1.01, P = 0.06) was found. For mortality rate, subgroup analysis was conducted according to study type, only in subgroup 2, the RR was significantly reduced (0.66, 95% CI; 0.51–0.87, P = 0.003) in studies. CONCLUSIONS: In this meta-analysis, sorafenib achieves no significant benefit in any of the endpoints except a lower mortality rate in subgroup analysis, indicating that there is no convincing evidence of sorafenib as an effective adjuvant therapy in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma after resection.