A SEER Database Analysis of the Survival Advantage of Transarterial Chemoembolization for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: An Underutilized Therapy

Purpose

To measure transarterial chemoembolization utilization and survival benefit among patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) patient population.

Materials and Methods

A retrospective study identified 37,832 patients with HCC diagnosed between 1991 and 2011. Survival was estimated by Kaplan–Meier method and compared by log-rank test. Propensity-score matching was used to address an imbalance of covariates.

Results

More than 75% of patients with HCC did not receive any HCC-directed treatment. Transarterial chemoembolization was the most common initial therapy (15.9%). Factors associated with the use of chemoembolization included younger age, more HCC risk factors, more comorbidities, higher socioeconomic status, intrahepatic tumor, unifocal tumor, vascular invasion, and smaller tumor size (all P < .001). Median survival was improved in patients treated with chemoembolization compared with those not treated with chemoembolization (20.1 vs 4.3 mo; P < .0001). Similar findings were demonstrated in propensity-scoring analysis (14.5 vs 4.2 mo; P < .0001) and immortal time bias sensitivity analysis (9.5 vs 3.6 mo; P < .0001). There was a significantly improved survival hazard ratio (HR) in patients treated with chemoembolization (HR, 0.42; 95% confidence interval, 0.39–0.45).

Conclusions

Patients with HCC treated with transarterial chemoembolization experienced a significant survival advantage compared with those not treated with transarterial chemoembolization. More than 75% of SEER/Medicare patients diagnosed with HCC received no identifiable oncologic treatment. There is a significant public health need to increase awareness of efficacious HCC treatments such as transarterial chemoembolization.