Impact of postoperative intra-abdominal infection on tumor recurrence and survival in hepatocellular carcinoma after curative liver resection.

Abstract

374 Background: Postoperative intra-abdominal infection has been reported contributed to higher tumor recurrence rate and poor survival in cancer patients. The study aims to evaluate the impact of postoperative intra-abdominal infection on recurrence free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients undergoing curative liver resection for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: ALL patients underwent liver resection from 2003 to 2010 were identified. The Clavien–Dindo (CD) classification was adopted to classify the complications and patients who died of postoperative complications within 30 days of surgery (grade V) were excluded form the study. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to assess variables. Results: 215 patients were included, the overall 30-day postoperative complication rate was 36.74% (n=79), 13.95% (n=30) were intra-abdominal infectious complication. Patients with intra-abdominal infection had worse RFS (27.6% vs 50%, p<0.001) and OS (46.7% vs 82.2%, p<0.001) than those without it. In multivariate analyses, postoperative intra-abdominal infection was an independent prognostic factor of tumor recurrence (hazard ratio = 2.183; 95% confidence interval, 1.334-3.573) and overall survival (hazard ratio = 4.990; 95% confidence interval, 2.643-9.420). Hepatitis B surface antigen positive, tumor diameter (>5cm) and Child-Pugh class (B) were other three independent factors associated with poor prognosis. Conclusions: According to the study, postoperative intra-abdominal infection predicts tumor recurrence and poor survival after radical liver resection in HCC patients. These findings may have implications of the potential association between inflammatory response and cancer progression.