Assessing the Survival Benefit of Surgery and Various Types of Radiation Therapy for Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Evidence from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Registries

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the survival benefit of surgery and radiation for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after adjusting for patient-specific and tumor-specific factors. METHODS: This study analyzed HCC patients who enrolled in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry between January 2004 and December 2013. Of the 5552 HCC patients, 4597 received surgery and 955 received radiation. Patients who received radiation were further divided into 3 subgroups: 541 who received beam radiation (BR), 197 who received radioactive implants (RI), and 217 who received radioisotopes (RIT). Propensity score weighting analysis derived from generalized boosted models (GBMs) was performed to ensure well-balanced characteristics in all comparison groups. RESULTS: Overall survival rates and HCC-specific survival rates were higher in those receiving surgery compared with those receiving radiotherapy. This was confirmed by Cox proportional hazard regression both before and after inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW). Before IPTW, the RIT group had a better outcome than the BR group in terms of overall and HCC-specific survival rates, but there was no significant difference between the RI and BR groups. After IPTW, Cox proportional hazard regression demonstrated that both the RIT and RI groups had higher survival rates than the BR group. CONCLUSION: In HCC patients, surgery was associated with higher survival rates compared with radiotherapy while adjusting for other factors. Among those who received radiotherapy, RIT and RI granted survival benefits.