Tumor necrosis as a poor prognostic predictor on postoperative survival of patients with solitary small hepatocellular carcinoma

Small hepatocellular carcinoma (sHCC) is a special subtype of HCC with the maximum tumor diameter ≤ 3 cm and excellent long-term outcomes. Surgical resection or radiofrequency ablation provides the greatest chance for cure; however, many patients still undergo tumor recurrence after primary treatment. To date, there is no clinical applicable method to assess biological aggressiveness in solitary sHCC. In the current study, we retrospectively evaluated tumor necrosis of 335 patients with solitary sHCC treated with hepatectomy between December 1998 and 2010 from Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. The presence of tumor necrosis was observed in 157 of 335 (46.9%) sHCC patients. Further correlation analysis showed that tumor necrosis was significantly correlated with tumor size and vascular invasion (P = 0.026, 0.003, respectively). The presence of tumor necrosis was associated closely with poorer cancer-specific overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) as evidenced by univariate (P