Recurrence of hepatocellular cancer after liver transplantation: The role of primary resection and salvage transplantation in East and West.

Background & Aims: Greater tumor aggressiveness and different management modalities of hepatocellular cancer (HCC) before liver transplantation (LT) may explain the higher recurrence rates reported in Asia. This study investigates the prognostic factors for HCC recurrence in a Western and an Eastern HCC patient cohort in order to analyze the respective roles of tumor- and manage- ment-related factors on the incidence of post-LT HCC recurrence. Methods: Data of 273 HCC patients, transplanted during the per- iod January 1999–March 2009, were obtained from the Rome Inter-University Liver Transplant Consortium (n = 157) and Hong Kong University (n = 116) databases. Median follow-up was 4.3 years (range: 0.2–12). Recurrence rate and multivariate logis- tic regression analysis was performed on the entire population and on Milan criteria-in (MC-in) patients. Results: Multivariate analysis on the entire population identified four independent risk factors for post-LT HCC recurrence: micro- vascular invasion (odds ratio, OR = 4.88; p = 0.001), poor tumor grading (OR = 6.86; p = 0.002), diameter of the largest tumor (OR = 4.72; p = 0.05), and previous liver resection (LR) (OR = 3.34; p = 0.04). After removal of LR, only tumor-related variables were independent risk factors for recurrence. When only MC-in patients were analyzed, no difference was observed between the two cohorts in terms of recurrence rate after LR patient removal.