Background/aims: Few studies have characterized the outcomes and clinical features of patients who undergo liver transplantation (LT) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) due to non-viral causes.
Methodology: We retrospectively analyzed 188 patients with HCC who underwent LT between February 1999 and October 2010. The clinicopathological factors and overall survival rates as well as recurrence rates of 17 patients with non-hepatitis B virus (HBV) and non-hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection (NBNC group) and 171 patients with HBV or HCV infection (HBV/ HCV group) were compared.
Results: HCC patients in the NBNC group were significantly younger at time of transplant, had higher serum des-gamma-carboxy prothrombin levels, and had larger pathological tumor size when compared with patients in the HBV/ HCV group. Overall survival rates were lower, and recurrence rates were higher in the NBNC group than in the HBV/HCV group. However, both these rates were significantly improved in NBNC patients who met our expanded selection criteria when compared with those that did not meet these criteria.
Conclusions: The patients with NBNC HCC had more advanced and biologically aggressive tumors with inferior outcomes when compared with those with HBV/HCV. However, use of appropriate selection criteria for LT yields improved outcomes even in this subgroup of patients.