Surgical Treatment for Hepatocellular Carcinoma – Choose Liver Resection or Liver Transplantation

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary malignancy in the liver. In very early/early HCC, surgical treatment is the treatment with the best outcomes. Surgical treatment for HCC included liver resection and liver transplantation. Recently, surgical treatment is toward liver transplantation instead of liver resection because disease-free and overall survival rates are better in liver transplantation than liver resection. However, liver donation is always short and it is impossible to perform primary liver transplantation for every HCC patient. Liver resection can undergo for the patients with low recurrent rate and liver allografts are allocated to the most suitable patients to achieve the best outcomes for all patients. Under this policy, liver resection will be preferred for the patients with solitary tumor and adequate liver function reservation and liver transplantation will be for the patients with multiple tumors, decompensate liver function or compensated liver function with clinical suspicion of portal hypertension.