Sarcopenia with muscle wasting in hepatic cancer predicts therapeutic outcome after hepatic artery intervention

We aimed to study sarcopenia for its significance in predicting the effect of hepatic artery intervention (HAI) plus lenvatinib on hepatitis B-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) complicated with diabetes mellitus (DM). Hepatitis B-related HCC patients complicated with DM (n = 102) visiting during January 2021 and December 2023 were retrospectively selected. Computed tomography was performed to detect the third lumbar vertebra for its muscle cross-sectional area. A non-sarcopenia group (59 cases) plus a sarcopenia group (43 cases, men with a skeletal muscle index ≤ 40.8 cm /m and women with a skeletal muscle index ≤ 34.9 cm /m ) were established according to different skeletal muscle indexes. Significant decline in body mass index (BMI) and albumin (ALB) level was observed in the sarcopenia group compared to the non-sarcopenia group (p