Postoperative complications affect early recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma after curative resection

Abstract Background Postoperative recurrence remains the major cause of death after curative resection for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study was conducted to evaluate the impact of postoperative complications on HCC recurrence after curative resection. Methods The postoperative outcomes of 274 HCC patients who underwent curative resection were analysed retrospectively. Results Of the 247 HCC patients, 103 (37.6 %) patients developed postoperative complications. The occurrence of postoperative complications was found to be associated with a significantly higher tumor recurrence (76.2 % vs. 56.6 %, P  = 0.002) and a lower 5-year overall survival rate (27.7 % vs. 42.1 %; P  = 0.037) as compared with those without complications. Regarding the recurrence pattern, early recurrence (≤2 years) was more frequently seen in patients with complications than that in patients without complications (54.5 % vs.38.6 %; P  = 0.011). Multivariate analysis indicated that postoperative complications occurrence was an independent risk factor for early recurrence (odds ratio [OR] 2.223; 95 % confidence intervals [95 % CI] 1.161–4.258, P  = 0.016) and poor overall survival (OR 1.413; 95 % CI, 1.012–1.971, P  = 0.042). Conclusions The results of the present study indicate that the occurrence of postoperative complications is a predictive factor for HCC recurrence after curative hepatectomy, especially for early recurrence.