Ablative-Transarterial Radioembolization resulting in complete histopathological response of hepatocellular carcinoma in the resected liver specimen after salvage hepatectomy

INTRODUCTION: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common disease. Many patients at the time of diagnosis of HCC are in advanced stages and cannot benefit from curative treatment. Palliative treatments remain the only treatment option. Advances in palliative treatment can occasionally downstage HCC and induce enough liver hypertrophy to allow salvage hepatectomy to be performed on patients with initially unresectable HCC. We herein present a patient who underwent salvage hepatectomy after successful Ablative-Transarterial Radioembolization (A-TARE) with complete histopathologic response in the resected liver specimen. CASE REPORT: A 67-year old obese patient presented with a 9.7 cm HCC at liver segment 8, with local tumour extension to involve segments 4,5 and 7. Initial workup suggested the tumour to be unresectable. A-TARE with yttrium-90 microspheres was given. Further workup 4 months after A-TARE showed the tumour to be downstaged with adequate hypertrophy of future liver remnant. Salvage hepatectomy became possible and the patient underwent salvage trisectionectomy 5 months after A-TARE. He recovered uneventfully from the operation. Histopathological examination of the resected liver specimen showed no viable tumour cells inside a fibrous mass which corresponded to the radiologic residual tumour. DISCUSSION: Salvage hepatectomy should be offered to patients after tumour downstaging with A-TARE as viable malignant cells are likely to persist. Complete response with no viable tumour cells in the resected liver specimen, to our knowledge, has never been reported in literature. CONCLUSION: A-TARE was able to induce complete histopathological response in a patient who initially presented with a large and unresectable HCC mass.