Extrahepatically growing Hepatocellular Carcinoma Growth and Cellular Proliferation and Infiltration

Shinji Osada, Shigetoyo Saji, Yoshinori Takahashi, Hiroshi Takao, Yasuyuki Sugiyama and Katsuyuki Kunieda

Second Department of Surgery, Gifu University School of Medicine

We treated 6 cases of extrahepatically growing hepatocellular carcinoma (EG-HCC) in the last 12 years out of 128 operative cases, and assessed their features and growth pattern to better evaluate HCC proliferation and/or infiltration compared to 54 cases of intrahepatically growing HCC (IH-HCC). Results: Clinicopathologically, EG-HCC showd (1) significantly higher AFP (p<0.0001), (2) a significant larger tumor size (p<0.019), (3) a higher tendency of poorly differentiated histology and (4) a higher frequency of intrahepatic metastasis. Immunohistochemically, (5) the positive rate of p53 showed no significant difference, while EG-HCC was tendency to show a higher labeling index (LI) of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), Conclusion Our results suggest that extrahepatic growth may favor cell proliferation increasing tumor size and reflecting intrahepatic infiltration.

Key words
hepatocellular carcinoma, extrahepatic growth, proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), p53, intrahepatic invasion

Reprint requests
Shigetoyo SajiSecond Department of Surgery, Gifu University School of Medicine 40 Tsukasa-machi, Gifu 500-8705, JAPAN

Accepted
April 25, 2001

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