“…No patient was excluded from our retrospective analysis in contrast to those studies, who investigated only the effect of surgery or local ablative therapy (Tanaka et al, 1998;Schlitt et al, 1999;O'Suilleabhain et al, 2003;Jaeck et al, 2004). Therefore, this data reflects the current situation, for unselected patients with HCC similar to a different study published 9 years ago (Stuart et al, 1996). As previously reported for other non-Asian centres (Stuart et al, 1996;Rabe et al, 2001;Erhardt et al, 2002), our patient population differed significantly from Asian centres (Sithinamsuwan et 2000) with less HbsAg-positive patients in our study population.…”