Clinicopathological Significance of AFP and PIVKA-II in Resected Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Kazuhito Misawa, Yoshie Une, Yasuaki Nakajima, Naoki Sato, Shinichi Matsuoka, Toshiya Kamiyama, Tsuyoshi Shimamura, Hirohumi Kamachi, Nobumoto Tomioka, Junichi Uchino

First Department of Surgery, Hokkaido University School of Medicine

Correlation between serum levels of AFP or PIVKA-II and the prognostic factors were evaluated in 48 resected hepatocellular carcinoma. Positive rate was 68.8% in AFP, 58.3% in PIVKA-II and 85.4% in both combination. The AFP level was correlated with none of the pathological factors. But in cases of PTVKA-II, the higher was it level, the higher was the incidence of intrahepatic metastasis, the more advanced the stage, the higher the rate of recurrence and the poorer the prognosis. In the patients of positive tumor marker at the first diagnosis, the rate of positive tumor marker at recurrence again was 45% in AFP and 38% in PIVKA-II. And in the patients of negative tumor marker at first diagnosis, the rate of positive tumor marker at recurrence was 13% in AFP and 0% in PIVKA-II. Therefore both tumor markers are necessary for diagnosis of HCC and monitoring after hepatoctomy. Especially, PIVKA-II was useful for evaluation of the stage and the patients with high levels of PTVKA-II were thought to be advanced HCC.

Key words
hepatocellular carcinoma, PIVKA-II, alpha-fetoprotein, recurrence

Reprint requests
Kazuhito Misawa First Department of Surgery, Hokkaido University School of Medicine
Kita-15-jo Nishi-7-chome, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060 JAPAN

Accepted
May 13, 1992

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