Serum biomarkers and risk of hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence after liver transplantation

Liver transplantation (LT) is the only potentially curative treatment for selected patients with cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who are not candidates for resection. When the Milan criteria are strictly applied, 75% to 85%of 3- to 4-year actuarial survival rates are achieved, but up to...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Citores, María J., Lucena De la Poza, José Luis, Fuente, Sara de la, Cuervas-Mons Martínez, Valentín
Format: article
Publication Date:2019
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repository:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/691181
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/691181
https://dx.doi.org/10.4254/wjh.v11.i1.50
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Hepatocellular carcinoma
Liver transplantation
Recurrence
Selection criteria
Prognostic score
Biomarker
Alpha-fetoprotein
Systemic inflammatory marker
Medicina
Description
Summary:Liver transplantation (LT) is the only potentially curative treatment for selected patients with cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who are not candidates for resection. When the Milan criteria are strictly applied, 75% to 85%of 3- to 4-year actuarial survival rates are achieved, but up to 20% of the patients experience HCC recurrence after transplantation. The Milan criteria are based on the preoperative tumor macromorphology, tumor size and number on computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging that neither correlate well with posttransplant histological study of the liver explant nor accurately predict HCC recurrence after LT, since they do not include objective measures of tumor biology. Preoperative biological markers, including alpha-fetoprotein, desgamma- carboxiprothrombin or neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and platelet-tolymphocyte ratio, can predict the risk for HCC recurrence after transplantation. These biomarkers have been proposed as surrogate markers of tumor differentiation and vascular invasion, with varied risk magnitudes depending on the defined cutoffs. Different studies have shown that the combination of one or several biomarkers integrated into prognostic models predict the risk of HCC recurrence after LT more accurately than Milan criteria alone. In this review, we focus on the potential utility of these serum biological markers to improve the performance of Milan criteria to identify patients at high risk of tumoral