Efficacy of Transarterial Targeted Treatments on Survival of Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background. Most patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are not suitable for surgical therapy. Systemic chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and hormonotherapy have not had convincingly acceptable results. Therefore, transarterial catheter-targeted therapies such as intraarterial chemotherapy (IAC), possibly followed by transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE), have been proposed. Methods. A survival analysis curve was drawn using the Kaplan-Meier method for 164 patients, 100 with HCC who underwent TACE (69) or IAC (31), and a matched historic group of 64 who did not receive specific antineoplastic treatment. Results. A significantly more favorable survival was observed for TACE-treated patients compared with IACtreated patients (P < 0.001); TACE- and IAC-treated patients had a statistically superior survival than that of untreated patients (P < 0.001 and P < 0.025, respectively). This difference was still significant (P < 0.001) when the patients were subdivided into Classes A and B and Stages I and I1 following Child's and Okuda's criteria. The TACE- and IAC-treated groups had a good relationship From the *Istituto di Patologia Medica I, the SServizio di Cardiodiagnostica, and the §Reparto di Medicina d'Urgenza, Universiti di Bologna, Bologna, Italy; the tServizio di Radiologia Diagnostica, Ospedale Bellaria di Bologna, Bologna Italy; and the IlIstituto di Clinica Medica, Universiti Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Roma, Roma, Italy.