Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) in treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Background/Aims: Substantial differences about the efficacy of transcatheter arterial chemoembolization for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma are reported in literature. This probably depends on the fact that in each single study, different patient selection criteria, type of epidemiological approach, end points adopted and kind of technical approach were used. This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of segmental transcatheter arterial chemoembolization in amelioring patient survival and to determine which patients might really benefit from this treatment. Methodology: To achieve our goals 193 consecutive patients (110 treated and 83 untreated) were studied. They were selected in the same period of time and matched as far as their demographic and clinical characteristics. Results: Our results demonstrate that both in treated and control patients, Child class, a-fetoprotein and tumor diameter significantly influenced survival, resulting important prognostic factors. Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization significantly ameliorated survival in treated patients compared to controls (p