Hepatocellular Carcinoma Screening Associated with Early Tumor Detection and Improved Survival Among Patients with Cirrhosis in the US

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma screening is associated with increased early tumor detection and improved survival; however, a minority of hepatocellular carcinoma patients are detected by screening. Interventions to increase screening use in patients with cirrhosis may help curb hepatocellular carcinoma mortality rates.

Evaluation of the diagnostic value of circulating tumor cells with CytoSorter® CTC capture system in patients with breast cancer

“…Circulating tumor cells can help monitoring patients' response to the treatment and tumor recurrences . Studies have suggested that early diagnosis of tumor led to the improvement of survival of patients . We aimed to investigate the feasibility of CTCs detection in BC patients using CytoSorter ® CTCs capture platform and to evaluate its clinical value in diagnosis of BC, especially regarding early diagnosis and cancer staging.…”

Effect of hospital safety net designation on treatment use and survival in hepatocellular carcinoma

“…Second, tumor stage was categorized by SEER instead of more clinically relevant HCC staging systems such as the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer staging system. This lack of granularity may potentially explain similarities in tumor stage between SNHs and non‐SNHs, and non‐SNHs may still have higher use of HCC surveillance and early tumor detection than SNHs . Third, treatment data in the cancer registry reflect only the first course of treatment; treatment of recurrent or progressive disease as well as treatment delivered following an initial bridging therapy were not available.…”

“…This lack of granularity may potentially explain similarities in tumor stage between SNHs and non-SNHs, and non-SNHs may still have higher use of HCC surveillance and early tumor detection than SNHs. [35][36][37] Third, treatment data in the cancer registry reflect only the first course of treatment; treatment of recurrent or progressive disease as well as treatment delivered following an initial bridging therapy were not available. Furthermore, around 8% of patients were missing treatment information; however, the pattern of missingness was similar across safety net categories.…”

Should AFP (or Any Biomarkers) Be Used for HCC Surveillance?

“…For many clinicians, these factors appear to justify use of US and AFP in combination for surveillance for HCC. After a number of years in which the primary debates about HCC surveillance were anchored around the perceived flaws in the supporting literature, such as lack of adjustment for lead time and length time bias, we are beginning to see results of a number of studies from Asia, North America and Europe that are addressing these concerns and providing more robust confirmation of surveillance benefits [19–25, 8, 26]. In addition, recent advances in next generation sequencing and molecular analysis of tumors, blood, stool and other analytes are producing what potentially may prove to be very exciting breakthroughs in biomarker technology, particularly assays of differentially methylated DNA regions and microRNAs.…”