Background and purpose: Chronic inflammatory response is a risk factor for hepatocarcinogenesis and recurrence. This study aimed to develop a nomogram incorporating the combined albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) and fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) scores and the peritumoral inflammation score (PIS) to predict postoperative recurrence-free survival (RFS) of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
Methods: The prognostic roles of preoperative ALBI and FIB-4 scores for HCC recurrence were investigated, and a nomogram was developed. The predictive ability of the nomogram was compared with the American Joint Commission on Cancer (AJCC) and Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) staging systems for HCC. Necroinflammatory activity in the peritumoral liver tissues was evaluated by hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining.
Results: Combined ALBI and FIB-4 was associated with PIS in the training and validation cohorts (r = 0.342 and 0.473, both P < 0.001), and all of the scores exhibited predictive value for RFS of HCC. The independent predictive factors of RFS such as AFP, tumor number, tumor size, microvascular invasion, PIS, and combined ALBI and FIB-4 were included in the corresponding nomogram. In the training cohort, the C-index of the RFS nomogram was 0.722. ROC analyses showed that the RFS nomogram had a larger AUC (0.739) than the AJCC and BCLC staging systems. These results were verified by the validation cohort.
Conclusions: The proposed nomogram incorporating PIS and combined ALBI and FIB-4 was associated with recurrence for HCC following curative hepatectomy.
Keywords: Inflammation; Liver cancer; Liver cirrhosis; Relapse; Surgery.