Abstract No. 551 Effectiveness of drug-eluting bead transarterial chemoembolization and transarterial radioembolization for patients with large hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

To evaluate the clinical outcomes of drug-eluting bead transarterial chemoembolization (DEB–TACE) and transarterial radioembolization (TARE) for patients with BCLC intermediate stage large hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). A retrospective analysis of patients who underwent DEB–TACE or TARE for BCLC intermediate stage large HCC (> 5 cm) was conducted at a single academic medical center from January 2016 to December 2018. Mann–Whitney test and Fisher’s exact test were used to compare groups. Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression were performed to assess overall survival (OS) and time to progression (TTP). During a median follow-up period of 11.2 months (range, 1.3-56.7 months), 17 and 27 patients were treated with DEB–TACE and TARE, respectively. Both groups had similar background variables. Objective tumor response rate was higher for TARE (81.5%) than for DEB–TACE (41.2%; P < 0.05). The median TTP of DEB–TACE and TARE was 9 months and 10.5 months (P = 0.96), respectively. The 1-, 2-, and 3-year OS were 71.4%, 35.7%, and 35.7% for DEB–TACE and 80.7%, 60.5%, and 60.5% for TARE (P = 0.4). There were more patients succeeded to obtain downstaging within Milan criteria for TARE (25.9%) than for DEB–TACE (17.7%; P = 0.72). With regression analysis, the tumor size was an independent prognostic factor for OS (P < 0.01) and TTP (P < 0.05). Compared to DEB–TACE, TARE has better tumor response rate for intermediate stage large HCC. However, there is no significant difference in tumor downstaging rate, TTP and OS between these techniques.