Tumor vascularity and lens culinaris agglutinin reactive alpha-fetoprotein are predictors of long-term prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma after percutaneous ethanol injection therapy.

Percutaneous ethanol injection therapy (PEIT) is now widely used for small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, only limited information is available regarding predictors of long-term prognosis of patients with small HCC after PEIT. The relationship of pretreatment clinicopathologic and biologic factors (age, sex, virus marker, Child-Pugh classification, tumor size, number of tumor, histologic grade, tumor staining, alpha-fetoprotein level, AFP-L3%, and Ki67 labelling index) to long-term prognosis in 41 patients with HCC were studied. Over-all survival rates of patients were 73.5% in 3-year, 34.7% in 5-year, and 27.0% in 7-year. Of the 12 variables investigated, Child-Pugh classification (p = 0.0243), histologic grade (p = 0.0098), tumor staining (p = 0.0012), AFP-L3% (0.0093), and Ki67 labelling index (p = 0.0467) were significantly associated with the long-term prognosis by univariate analysis. According to the multivariate analysis using Cox's proportional hazard model with step-wise method, tumor staining (p = 0.0024) and AFP-L3% (p = 0.0137) were significantly associated with the long-term prognosis after PEIT. In conclusion, the study found that positive tumor staining of HCC and positive AFP-L3% in serum were the predictor of poor prognosis in patients with HCC after PEIT.