Sarcomatoid hepatocellular carcinoma versus conventional hepatocellular carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Sarcomatoid hepatocellular carcinoma (SHCC) is a rare subtype of primary liver malignancies and is still ill-defined and poorly understood. Therefore, our study was performed to have a comprehensive evaluation SHCC versus conventional hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods A thorough database searching was performed in PubMed, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library. RevMan5.3 and Stata 13.0 software were used for statistical analyses. The primary endpoint of our analysis is the long-term survival and the secondary endpoint is clinical and pathological features. Results Four studies with a relative large cohort were finally identified. Compared with patients with pure HCC, patients with SHCC had a significantly worse overall survival ( P