HCC in Older Patients

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a heterogeneous disease, with many poorly-defined prognostic patient subsets. Identification of discrete subsets will aid rational patient and treatment selection. A database with 778 biopsy-proven, unresectable and untransplantable HCC patients who were followed from diagnosis till death was interrogated. Using a moving average algorithm, patients were ordered by survival and then survival cohorts were analyzed according to standard liver function and CT characteristic parameters. We found characteristic age clustering groupings by survival. In the older age patients, two survival sub-groups were identified, with 45-80 days in one and 330-1,250 days survival in the other group. The longer surviving group had the lowest serum bilirubin and AFP levels and the lowest tumor mass. Remarkably, the trends for both AFP and bilirubin were similar, suggesting that they were not independent variables. This idea was supported by the similar correlation of typical AFP with GGTP, ALKP and SGOT levels. A large HCC cohort showed significant age clustering characteristics for survival, especially in older patients. AFP, bilirubin and age were found to be inter-related factors for HCC severity and survival.