Comparison of prognosis between surgical resection and transarterial chemoembolization for patients with solitary huge hepatocellular carcinoma

BACKGROUND: For patients with solitary huge (>10 cm in size) hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and without major vascular invasion, the treatment efficacy between surgical resection (SR) and transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is not well studied. We aimed to compare the prognoses between SR and TACE for patients with solitary huge HCC. METHODS: We enrolled 143 patients with treatment-naïve, solitary HCC (>10 cm) who had received either SR or TACE treatment between 2007–2016. Factors of overall survival (OS) were analyzed by multivariate analysis. Propensity scores matching (PSM) method was adopted to adjust baseline demographic differences for further analysis. RESULTS: Ninety patients underwent SR and 53 patients received TACE. After a median follow-up of 17.0 (interquartile range 7.7–45.6) months, 83 patients had died. The cumulative 5-year OS rate was 44.7% and 11.7% for the SR group and the TACE group, respectively (P<0.001). A multivariate analysis showed that TACE [hazard ratio (HR): 3.515, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.202–5.610, P<0.001], and albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grade >1 (HR: 2.181, 95% CI: 1.343–3.543, P=0.002) were the independent risk factors associated with poorer OS. After PSM, 37 pairs of matched patients were selected from each treatment arm. After matching, patients who underwent SR still evinced a significantly higher OS than did those who underwent TACE (P=0.010). CONCLUSIONS: SR provided a better OS than did TACE for patients with solitary huge (≥10 cm) HCC. As such, SR is recommended as the therapeutic priority for these patients.