Changing role of histopathology in the diagnosis and management of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Changing role of histopathology in the diagnosis and management of hepatocellular carcinoma. World J Gastroenterol. 2018 Sep 21;24(35):4000-4013 Authors: Rastogi A Abstract Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common and fatal cancer in the world. HCC frequently presents with advanced disease, has a high recurrence rate and limited treatment options, which leads to very poor prognosis. This warrants urgent improvement in the diagnosis and treatment. Liver biopsy plays very important role in the diagnosis and prognosis of HCC, but with technical advancements and progression in the field of imaging, clinical guidelines have restricted the role of biopsy to very limited situations. Biopsy also has its own problems of needle tract seeding of tumor, small risk of complications, technical and sampling errors along with interpretative errors. Despite this, tissue analysis is often required because imaging is not always specific, limited expertise and lack of advanced imaging in many centers and limitations of imaging in the diagnosis of small, mixed and other variant forms of HCC. In addition, biopsy confirmation is often required for clinical trials of new drugs and targeted therapies. Tissue biomarkers along with certain morphological features, phenotypes and immune-phenotypes that serve as important prognostic and outcome predictors and as decisive factors for therapy decisions, add to the continuing role of histopathology. ...
Source: World Journal of Gastroenterology : WJG - Category: Gastroenterology Authors: Tags: World J Gastroenterol Source Type: research