[Surgical treatment of sclerosing hepatocellular carcinoma].
OBJECTIVE
Sclerosing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an unusual subtype of HCC that is characterized by an embedded dense fibrous stroma in the tubular neoplastic structures. We aimed to assess the surgical approaches and outcomes of sclerosing HCC.


METHODS
We retrospectively analyzed the clinicopathologic features of 6 patients with sclerosing HCC who underwent surgical treatment at Asan Medical Center between July 1989 and December 2005.


RESULTS
Six HCC patients with sclerosing HCC were diagnosed out of the total 1390 HCC patients (0.43%) during the study period. The mean age was 58 years and 4 patients were male. Weight loss and abdominal pain were the most common symptoms. The serum calcium and phosphorus levels were normal in all the patients. All of them were hepatitis B surface antigen-positive, but none was positive for hepatitis C. All the lesions were solitary. The tumor size ranged from 45 to 150 mm in diameter (median size: 81 mm). We performed right trisegmentectomy (n=1), central bisegmentectomy (n=1), right anterior segmentectomy (n=1), ex-vivo resection and autotransplantation (n=1) and right posterior segmentectomy (n=2). The median overall survival and disease free-survival periods were 24 months and 9.5 months, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
The incidence of sclerosing HCC was very low. Sclerosing HCC was often not correctly diagnosed before an operation, but performing resection prolonged the patients' survival and their prognosis was not worse than that for ordinary HCC. Our experience implicates that aggressive surgical treatment for sclerosing HCC is beneficial for patient survival.
Kim
Bum-Soo
BS
Division of Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation, Department of Surgery, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
Lee
Sung-Gyu
SG
Hwang
Shin
S
Lee
Young-Joo
YJ
Park
Kwang-Min
KM
Kim
Ki-Hun
KH
Ahn
Chul-Soo
CS
Moon
Deok-Bog
DB
Ha
Tae-Yong
TY
Song
Gi-Won
GW
Jung
Dong-Hwan
DH
Moon
Ki-Myung
KM
D000328:Adult; D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008099:Liver / Q000473:pathology*; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012598:Sclerosis; D015996:Survival Rate