Impact of spontaneous hepatocellular carcinoma rupture on surgical outcome after liver resection: a systemic review and meta-analysis
Abstract Background Spontaneous tumor rupture is a rare but life-threatening complication of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The impact of spontaneous ruptured HCC on long-term survival after liver resection (LR) remains unclear. Our aim was to compare the surgical outcome in patients who underwent LR with ruptured and non-ruptured HCC . Methods A comprehensive search using PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Science Citation Index Expanded databases was performed. The primary outcomes were the hazard ratio (HR) for overall survival ( OS) and disease free survival (DFS). The secondary outcomes included morbidity, hospital mortality and recurrence rate . Results Ten retrospective studies including 3222 patients met the inclusion criteria. Pooled analysis revealed a significantly poorer OS and DFS for patients with ruptured HCC compared to patients with non-ruptured HCC (HR, 2.02; 95% CI, 1.61-2.54; P< 0.00001 and HR, 1.92; 95% CI, 1.56-2.35; P<0.00001, respectively). In the subgroup analysis, both the propensity score matching (PSM) and non-PSM studies demonstrated a significantly poorer OS in the ruptured HCC group (P=0.02 and P<0.00001, respectively). However, meta-analysis of two PSM studies showed that there was not significant difference in the DFS between the two groups (P=0.50). Patients in the ruptured HCC group had a higher mortality and recurrence rate than the non-ruptured HCC group, but the difference was not significant (P = 0.05 and P = 0.06, respectively) Conclusions Surgical outcomes of the patients with the ruptured or non-ruptured HCC undergoing LR were not only affected by tumor rupture itself, but also by the tumor characteristics and liver functional status. Therefore, classifying all ruptured but resectable HCC as T4 stage is unable to accurately represent their true prognosis.