The Outcomes and Affecting Factors Analysis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients Underwent Transcatheter Arterial Chemoembolization

Liver cancer is the first leading cause of cancer death among the male Taiwanese and the second among the female Taiwanese. Nowadays, transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) is a widely accepted treatment option for liver cancer patients who can't receive surgical resection. This study adopted retrospective medical record review analysis method, which took the patients who received TACE in this district teaching hospital between January 2001 and December 2005 as research subjects. KaplanMeier life table analysis was applied to calculate the one-year, two-year, three-year survival rates of patients who received TACE between 2000 and 2005, and the multivariate Cox regression was used to analyze the important affecting factors. There were 80 patients who received 414 TACE treatments. On average, each patient received 5.2 TACE, and the mean age was 60.2±14.2 years old. Among these patients, 40 patients had hepatitis B, and 32 patients had hepatitis C. According to Child's c1assification, 19 patients were in Child's A, 8 in Child's B and 4 in Child's C and 49 patients were non-cirrhosis. Among these 80 patients, 40 had comorbidity, and 4 had complication. In the survival analysis (n=80), the one-year, two-year, three-year survival rates were 76.3%, 45% and 31.3%, respectively, and the mean survival time was 24 months. The factors which significantly affected the survival rate included age, size of tumor, number of tumors, Child's C, AJCC cancer staging, pathology c1assification, AFP reduction to one half in one month after receiving TACE (AFP-D50), and portal vein thrombosis (PVT). It was found that younger age, larger tumor size, more tumor numbers, Child's C, high grade of AJCC stage, high grade of pathologic c1assification, AFP-D50 and PVT all had poorer prognosis.