Key clinical point : The better safety profile of transarterial radioembolization (TARE) together with comparable efficacy makes it a potential therapeutic alternative to surgical resection for large single nodular hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
Main finding: After inverse probability weighting, TARE vs surgical resection achieved similar overall survival (hazard ratio [HR], 0.98; P = .97), time to progression (HR, 1.10; P = .80), and time to intrahepatic progression (HR, 1.45; P = .30), along with a shorter hospital stay (3 days vs 12 days; P < .001) and lower patient proportion experiencing adverse events requiring intervention (0.0% vs 3.2%; P = .39).
Study details: Findings are from a retrospective cohort study including 557 adult patients with single nodular HCC measuring ≥5 cm who underwent either surgical resection (n=500) or TARE (n=57) shortly after diagnosis.
Disclosures: The authors reported no source of funding. Some of the authors received lecture fees or research grants from various sources.
Source: Kim J et al. J Nucl Med. 2021 Dec 9. doi: 10.2967/jnumed.121.263147 .