Does fibrosis have an impact on survival of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma: evidence from the SEER database?

BACKGROUND

Liver fibrosis is involved in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but its effect on the survival of patients with HCC remains controversial. This study aims to explore whether the severity of liver fibrosis has an impact on HCC overall survival (OS) and disease-specific survival (DSS) in Surveilance, Epidemiology, and End-Results (SEER) database.

METHODS

A total of 11,783 HCC patients diagnosed between 2004 and 2014 from SEER database were enrolled. Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to estimate crude and adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for fibrosis group associated with survival. Decision curve analysis (DCA) was also performed to compare the effect of fibrosis with other clinicopathological characteristics for survival outcome.

RESULTS

Patients with high fibrosis score (5-6) had a greater proportion than those with low fibrosis score (0-4) (80.3% vs. 19.7%). Fibrosis score was an independent prognostic factor for OS (HR = 1.09, 95%CI: 1.02-1.16), but not for DSS (HR = 1.05, 95%CI: 0.98-1.13) by multivariate Cox proportional hazard models. Additionally, there was no significant effect of liver fibrosis on OS and DSS with stratification of TNM stage and therapy. Findings of DCA showed that fibrosis was less associated with survival outcome in comparison with other tumor characteristics.

CONCLUSIONS

The effect of fibrosis on HCC survival was less important than that of other clinicopathological characteristics (like TNM stage or tumor size).