Long-term Histopathologic Follow-up of a Spherical Embolic Agent; Observation of the Transvascular Migration of HepaSphereTM

Very few studies have been published on the long-term histopathologic follow-up of spherical embolic agents after their injection. To our knowledge, there are no reports in the literature regarding pathological analysis of the transvascular migration of HepaSphere particles. We here report a case of a patient with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who underwent liver transplantation 12 months after drug eluting microsphere transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (DEM-TACE), and long-term histopathologic follow-up of the microspheres was performed. Furthermore, to our knowledge, this is the first report in which transvascular migration of a HepaSphere particle was confirmed histologically. A 60-year-old male with chronic hepatitis B was treated with entecavir and seroconversion was obtained. The patient had decompensated cirrhosis, and desired to undergo living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). However, 2 HCC tumors of 3  cm or less were detected in his liver. The transplantation surgeon proposed DEM-TACE ...