[The assessment of preoperative transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)--the comparison between "whole-liver" TAE and "lobar or segmental" TAE].

In 180 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who underwent radical hepatectomy, 52 patients were received preoperative arterial chemoembolization (TAE) for the whole liver (whole-liver TAE group: group A), 39 for the limited area of the liver (lobar or segmental TAE group: group B) and the remaining 89 had no treatments before surgery (control group: group C). In order to evaluate the significance of preoperative TAE, long-term prognoses were compared among the three groups. Although there were no significant differences in survivals between A and C, the 2- and 6-year survivals in group B were significantly better than those in group C (P less than 0.05). With regard to reduction rates of tumors and necrotizing effect for daughter nodules after TAE, the lobar or segmental TAE was significantly superior to the whole-liver TAE. Moreover, the lobar or segmental TAE deteriorated the liver function significantly less than the whole-liver TAE. These findings suggest that the lobar or segmental TAE is more advantageous than the whole-liver TAE as a preoperative adjuvant therapy.