Key clinical point: Patients with recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma had increased recurrence-free survival after rHR compared to RFA, but significantly lower morbidity and shorter hospital stays with RFA compared to rHR; overall survival rates were not significantly different between groups.
Major finding: The median recurrence-free survival was longer in recurrent HCC patients treated with rHR compared to RFA (23.6 months vs 15.2 months, hazard ratio 0.76). However, RFA was significantly association with lower morbidity of grade 3 and above (0.6% vs 6.2%) and with a shorter hospital stay (8.0 days vs 3.0 days) compared to rHR.
Study details: The data come from a retrospective, multicenter study including 847 HCC patients; of these, 307 underwent repeat hepatic resection (rHR) and 540 underwent radiofrequency ablation (RFA) between January 2003 and January 2018.
Disclosures: The study was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, the Guangxi BaGui Scholars’ Special Fund, the Gunagxi Natural Science Foundation, and the Science Research and Technology Development Programme of Guangxi. The researchers had no financial conflicts to disclose.
Source: Zhong J-H et al. Br J Surg. 2021 Oct 13. doi: 10.1093/bjs/znab340.