|
Desmond
Yip, Michael Findlay, Michael Boyer, Martin H Tattersall, 1Department
of Medical Oncology, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Cam
perdown, NSW, Australia
2Wellington Cancer Centre Private Bag 7902, Wellington,
New Zealand
Email. michael.findlay@wnhealth.co.nz
3University of Sydney, Camperdown NSW, Australia
Dr. Desmond Yip, male, born on 1966-01-28 in Sydney, Australia.
Gradua
ted from Sydney University in 1989, trained in medical oncology, now
working in
clinical research with an interest in gastrointestinal malignancies
and novel therapies. Currentlya clinical research fellow, Department
of Medical Onco
logy, Guy′s
Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
Correspondence to: Dr. Michael Findlay, Wellington Regional
Oncology Unit, Wellington Hospital, Private Bag 7902, Wellington,
New Zealand
Telephone:
+644-385-5999, Fax. +64-4385-5984
Email.woncmf@wnhealth.co.nz
Received:
1998-08-10
Subject
headings: carcinoma,
hepatocellular; liver neoplasms; survival/rate; Australia
Yip
D, Findlay M, Boyer M, Tattersall MH. Hepatocellular carcinoma in
central Sydney: a 10 year review of patients seen in a medical
oncology department. World J Gastroentero, 1999;5(6):483-487
Abstract
AIM: To report a single
Australian oncology unit′s
experie
nce with the management of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC),
in the
context of a literature review of the current management issues.
METHODS: Retrospective case record review of 76 patients with
di
agnosis of HCC referred to the unit between 1984 and 1995.
RESULTS: Sixty-three patients had adequate records for
analysis. Thirty-six (56%) were migrants with half from Southeast
Asia. Twenty-four p
atients had a documented viral aetiology. Nine (14%) of 51 patients
with patholo
gical confirmation of HCC had normal alpha-fetoprotein levels.
Median survival
of the 20 patients managed palliatively was 5 weeks compared to 16
weeks for the
cohort overall. Surgery in 16 patients rendered all initially
disease free with
a median survival of 88 weeks. Chemoembolisation induced tumor
responses in 5
of the 11 patients so treated. Systemic chemotherapy and tamoxifen
treatment cau
sed tumor response in two of 12 and one of 25 respectively.
CONCLUSION: Prolonged survival of patients with HCC depends
on
early detection of small tumors suitable for surgical resection.
Other active t
reatments are palliative in intent and have limited success. In
addition to tumo
r response and survival duration, the toxicities of therapies and
the overall qu
ality of life of patients need to be considered as important
outcomes. Viral hep
atitis prevention and screening of individuals at risk are
strategies that are important for HCC management in communities
where the disease is endemic.
INTRODUCTION
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fourth most common cause
of death from malignancy in the world and the third most common in
men[1].
High risk areas such as Asia and Africa are associated with endemic
hepatitis B and C infections. In Australia HCC is still a relatively
uncommon cancer as it is in most developed nations. In the state of
New South Wales the incidence was 2 6 per 100
000 for males and 1.1 per 100000 for females from 1985 to 1989. The
incidence is significantly higher in male and female migrants from
China, Taiwan
and Vietnam[2].
We
reviewed all cases of HCC that were seen in the Department of
Medical Oncolog
y at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital a tertiary centre situated in
central Sydney b
etween January 1984 to December 1995. Patient demographics,
presenting symptoms,
disease stage, prognostic indicators as well as treatment and
outcomes were det
ermined.
METHOD
Using the Clinical Reporting System (CRS) database in the
Department of Medical
Oncology, the names of 76 patients with the diagnosis of HCC were
obtained. The departmental files and the medical records were then
examined and information co
llected using a proforma. Parameters collected included sex, age,
nationality, c
linical and pathological status, presenting symptoms, ECOG (Eastern
Cooperative
Oncology Group) performance status at time of initial contact,
presence or absen
ce of cirrhosis, documentation of possible etiological factors and
alpha-fetopr
otein (AFP) levels. Tumor response to therapy was recorded using WHO
response criteria. Partial response was defined as a greater than
50% reduction in the sum of the products of the longest tumor
dimension and its widest perpendicular, in the absence of new
lesions. Where disease was not measurable, changes in AFP level were
monitored. Complete response was defined as no tumor evident on
imaging plus normalisation of AFP if this was measured. Progressive
disease was defined as 25% increase in measurable tumor size or
sustained increase in AFP.
Survival
time was measured from the date of diagnosis to the date of death
determined where possible from the hospital records, contact with
local doctors and computer search of the New South Wales Cancer
Registry databases.
RESULTS
Seventy-six patients with a diagnosis of HCC were seen in the
Department during
this period. Of these, sixty-three patients had records that
contained suffici
ent information for analysis.
Demographics
The mean age of the patients was 50 years (range 27-77) with
43 males and 20 fe
males. Fifty-six percent of the patients were born overseas with
over half of t
hese born in Southeast Asia (Table 1).
Clinical characteristics
Of 57 patients where data on symptoms were available,
thirteen (23%) patients were asymptomatic at the time of diagnosis.
Three had an ECOG performance status of 4 (totally bedbound) and six
a score of 3 (spending more than 50% of waking hours in bed). The
most common presenting symptom was pain in 33 (58%) followed by
weight loss in 27 (47%) and abdominal distension in 17 (30%).
Sixteen (28%) patients presented with jaundice. The median duration
of symptoms before presentation was two months, ranging from
immediately prior to presentation up to 50 weeks.
The
most common documented aetiological factor for hepatocellular
carcinoma i
n this series was hepatitis B infection in 21 (33%) patients. Five
patients had
hepatitis C infection, and three of these were co-infected with both
hepatitis
B and C. Routine testing for hepatitis C at Royal Prince Alfred
Hospital only be
came available from mid 1989 and retrospective testing was not done
in the cohor
t, which may explain the relatively low infection rate in this
series. Five (22%
) of the 23 patients with viral hepatitis were Australian born. Of
the three pa
tients who had cirrhosis secondary to hemochromatosis all had
alcohol as a cofac
tor. Alcohol was a cofactor in 5 (19%) of the 26 Australian born
patients and fi
ve (14%) of the overseas born patients. Twenty-three patients had no
apparent c
a
usative factor. One patient had a past history of low grade lymphoma
and another
hydatid liver disease. These causative factors are listed in Table
2.
Pathological
confirmation of diagnosis was obtained in 51 patients (81%) mainly
by fine needle aspiration biopsy. In the remainder, a clinical
diagnosis was based on radiological appearance on CT scan or hepatic
angiogram and a raised serum AFP level. There were nine patients
(14%) with pathological confirmation of HCC who had normal AFP
levels at presentation. The initial levels ranged from 0 to 36000IU.
Thirty-five (69%) of the 51 patients where information was ava
ilable had clinical, pathological or radiological evidence of
cirrhosis at initial presentation. Thirty-four patients (of 56
evaluable) had multifocal tumors on imagin
g or pathology and six had regional node enlargement. Ten of 61
patients (16%) h
ad distant metastases with the sites being lung in (7) and bone (4).
Treatment
Twenty (30%) patients received no anti-tumor treatment and
were managed with supportive care. Six of these patients presented
with ECOG performance status 3 o
r 4. The median survival of this group was five weeks from the time
of diagnosis
.
The
remaining 43 patients received some form of anti-tumor therapy. The
median time from diagnosis to initiation of treatment was 15 days
(range 0 days to 5.
2 years). Seventeen patients received two types of therapy and four
patients rec
eived three or four different treatments.
Surgery
was performed in 16 (25%) patients, either in the form of a
lobectomy or hemihepatectomy. Three of these patients had surgery
after chemoembolization. Two patients had repeat resections for
relapse 5 and 39 months after curative resection. No patients in the
series received allograft transplantation as their first therapeutic
intervention. All patients who underwent surgery were rendered
clinically disease free afterwards. Their median survival was 88
weeks (range 5-
354 weeks) from diagnosis or surgery with the median time to relapse
being 43 we
eks (range 4-182). Two patients are still alive at one year and two
years after
surgery.
Chemoembolization of the HCC by the selective injection of
cisplatin and Lipiodol into the hepatic artery was carried out in 11
(17%) patients. In three patients this was done prior to surgery in
an attempt to reduce the vascularity and size of the tumor. One of
these patients received alcohol injection into the tumor
as well and proceeded to an orthotopic liver transplantation. The
other two patients had initial marked falls in the AFP to almost
within normal range but these had risen to beyond pretreatment
levels prior to surgery. Six patients (55%) had a 50% reduction in
AFP with the median time to progression being 25 weeks (excluding
the transplanted patient from the calculation of the duration of
response). Median survival from chemoembolization was 48.5 weeks.
Twelve
(19%) patients were treated with systemic chemotherapy. Three were
given anthracycline treatment alone (2 adriamycin, 1 epirubicin),
while others received various combinations of cisplatin, adriamycin,
5-fluorouracil (5FU), etoposid
e and mitomycin C. Two patients received more than one regimen of
chemotherapy. Only two patients had objective tumor responses to
chemotherapy. Another two ha
d stable disease. The median time to tumor progression was 26 weeks.
Tamoxifen
was administered to 25 (40%) patients, with only one showing
evidence of AFP response. The time to progression was 44 weeks. Two
other patients had stable disease.
Table
3 summarises the response rates, response duration and overall
survival of the groups of patients according to the treatments
received. The median survival of the group as a whole was 16 weeks
with the mean being 50 weeks.
Table 1 Countries of birth of cohort
|
Country
of Birth
|
No.
|
|
Australia
|
26
|
|
Egypt
|
3
|
|
Europe
|
11
|
|
India
|
1
|
|
Pacific
Islands
|
1
|
|
Southeast
Asia
|
20
|
|
Unknown
|
1
|
|
Total
|
63
|
Table
2 Breakdown of established
aetiological factors in cohort
|
Alcohol
|
10
|
|
Chronic
autoimmune hepatitis
|
3
|
|
Hepatitis
B
|
21
|
|
Hepatitis
C
|
5
|
|
Hepatitis
B+C
|
3
|
|
Haemochromatosis
|
3
|
|
Unknown
|
23
|
|
Total
|
63
|
Table
3 Summary of treatments received for
hepatocellular carcinoma
|
Treatment
|
Number
of patients (%)
|
Number
responding (%)
|
Median
time to progression (weeks)
|
|
Observation
|
20
(30)
|
|
|
|
Surgery
|
16
(25)
|
16
(100)
|
43
|
|
Chemoembolization
|
11
(17)
|
6
(54)
|
25
|
|
Systemic
chemotherapy
|
12
(19)
|
2
(27)
|
26
|
|
Tamoxifen
|
25
(40)
|
1
(4)
|
44
|
DISCUSSION
Despite a variety of therapeutic
strategies HCC remains a significant cause of cancer death
worldwide. The mainstay of treatment is resection of the disease. Th
is is facilitated by early detection of tumors and by liver
transplantation when poor hepatic function would otherwise prevent
resection. Other treatments, largely directed at palliation such as
chemotherapy (±embolization),
percutaneous ethanol injection, radiation and hormone therapy are
modest in their effects however they may play a role in conjunction
with surgery. Equally or more important strategies are prevention of
predisposing illnesses (e.g., hepatitis B) or modification of the
cirrhotic pre-malignant field defect.
Hepatic
resection is generally only feasible in patients with focal lesions
and with adequate underlying hepatic function[3].
Because of tumor stage at presentation and the presence of
cirrhosis, the proportion of patients suitable for surgery is
generally small. The role of orthotopic hepatic transplantation is
still controversial. There have been concerns about the
perioperative mortality and the frequency of tumor recurrence in the
transplanted liver, but transplantation offers some chance of cure
of both the tumor and the cirrhosis. A recent series[4]
of 48 patients with small tumors
(single <5cm
or no
more than three <3cm)
and cirrhosis undergoing transplantation, reported
overall survival and disease free survival at four years to be 75%
and 83% resp
ectively. Ninety-four percent of these patients had underlying viral
hepatitis.
Percutaneous
ethanol injection of these tumors has usually been restricted to
non-surgical candidates and one series from Italy has shown
encouraging survival
figures where ethanol injection was used instead of surgery[5].
This ap
proach may provide a treatment for patients with no access to
resection services
or those with poor liver reserve, who are not otherwise able to have
a liver tr
ansplant. Other forms of imaging-directed destruction such as
cryotherapy, lase
r and thermotherapy may have similar potential.
As
is the published experience, we found the response rate with
systemic chemotherapy low and of short duration. Doxorubicin,
remains the most widely used agent but being liver metabolized it
may result in unpredictable toxicity in those with hepatic disease.
When used as a single agent it generally has a response rate below
20%[6].
Epirubicin, idarubicin and mitoxantrone all have activity comparable
to doxorubicin. Single agent activities of other intravenously
administered cytotoxics such as cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil, etoposide
and mitomycin
C are all in the range of 0%-15%[6].
The Eastern Cooperative Oncology
Group[7]
has evaluated 432 patients in
four sequential trials of varying
combinations of 5-FU, streptozotocin, semustine, doxorubicin,
zinostatin, amsa
crine and cisplatin. The median survival of the group as a whole
with systemic c
hemotherapy was 14 weeks with a one-year survival of only 15%. The
best median
s
urvival of 24 weeks was obtained with the combination of 5-FU and
semustine. Al
though any of these agents may cause greater response rates if given
intra-arte
rially with or without embolization, most reports of trials of
chemotherapy, bot
h single agent and combinations have small patient numbers and none
shows a conv
incing superiority to be considered standard treatment[7,8].
Chemoembolization
consists of a relatively selective embolization of the tumor blood
supply with agents such as cisplatin and Lipiodol. While
theoretically attractive, the technique may result in hepatic
decompensation because the cirrhotic liver is more dependent on
blood from the hepatic artery than the portal vein. For this reason
embolization techniques are suitable for a small group of patients.
In the Group D′Etude
et de Traitment du Carcinome Hepatocellularie[9]
randomised trial of
chemoembolisation versus conservative management in 96
selected patients from 24 centres, there was no significant survival
difference
detected after accounting for differences in baseline and prognostic
characteris
tics. Small survival differences however would not be detected by a
study of thi
s size. Half of the patients in the treatment group had reduction in
AFP levels.
These observations are in keeping with the findings in our study.
Hepatic decom
pensation however was seen in 70% of patients having
chemoembolization. Another
multicentre randomised study[10]
of Lipiodol/cisplatin
chemoembolization
in 73 patients also reported no survival difference. Transarterial
embolization
without chemotherapy in a single institutional study has also
demonstrated no s
urvival advantage versus supportive care[11].
In these circumstances, a
more appropriate endpoint may be symptom control, analgesic
requirements and qua
lity of life rather than survival. Symptomatic rather than
asymptomatic patients
may be more appropriate candidates for chemotherapy.
Oestrogen
receptors have been detected in normal liver tissue and in HCC with
the levels tending to be higher in the neoplastic tissue. This
provides the rationale of using the anti-oestrogen tamoxifen. Seven
randomized trials of tamoxifen
versus placebo in advanced HCC have been reported[12-18].
Three[12-14]
which had
under 38 patients each reported improved survival in the
tamoxifen treated arms. An additional two randomized trials
investigating chemo
therapy and tamoxifen found no improvement in response or survival
when tamoxife
n was added to doxorubicin[19]
or intra-arterial cisplatin and
5FU[15].
An overview of the published randomised trials of tamoxifen versus
act
ive or no active treatment in HCC between 1978 and 1995 suggested a
moderate ben
efit with a 2.2 odds ratio for 1 year survival[20].
However the largest
randomized study so far involving 496 patients has recently been
presented and
showed no survival benefit of tamoxifen compared to supportive care[19].
Antiandrogen
therapy has also been tried in HCC on the basis that it is a male p
redominant disease, it can be induced by androgen therapy and that
the receptors
are expressed in high levels in the tumors. A European Organisation
for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) multicentre trial[21]
compared antiandrogen therapy
with a luteinising hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH)agonist eithe
r goserelin or triptoreline, with a pure antiandrogen nilutamide
alone or in combination against placebo in 244 patients with
advanced HCC. No significant difference however was found in any of
the groups.
A recent study reports an apparent
reduction in the incidence of new primary HCCs in patients
administered polyprenoic acid, an acyclic retinoid, after resection
for HCC. This strategy targets the pre-malignant field defect that
leads to H
CC[22].
Radiation
therapy has been more usually applied in the form of radioactive
ligands injected into the hepatic artery than as external radiation.
A preliminary report of a randomized trial from Hong Kong has shown
that 131I labelled lipiodol injected post-resection
improves the time to tumor recurrence[2
3].
Similarly data from pilot studies suggest post-transplant/resection
- chemotherapy may improve outcome, although randomized trials are
still underw
ay[24].
Viral
hepatitis is a significant causative factor for HCC in our cohort
especially in those born overseas, being present in over one-third.
In the migrant population high hepatitis B endemicity accounts for
the high prevalence rate. In hepatitis B associated cirrhosis the
cumulative incidence of hepatocellular carcino
ma has been found to be 59% over a six-year period[25].
With hepatitis
C associated cirrhosis, a Japanese prospective study[26]
has reported th
at 75% of patients will develop HCC by 15 years. Preventative
measures such as h
epatitis B vaccination in endemic disease populations is obviously
an important
and effective strategy. A recent study from Taiwan has reported that
a national
hepatitis B vaccination program has reduced the annual HCC incidence
in children
of aged 6-14 years from 0.7 to 0.36 per 100 000 (P<0.01),
with a similar effect on population mortality[27].
Treatment of viral related chronic active hepatitis with interferon
alpha may not only prevent development of
cirrhosis but also reduce the frequency of subsequent HCC[28].
Alcohol
was also an important risk factor in the Australian born patients in
our series. In a larger published series of HCC[29]
from western Sydney it was found
to be an association in 46% of the Australian patients and only 13%
of those born overseas.
Screening of high risk populations
for HCC by a combination of serum AFP determination and imaging with
high resolution real time ultrasound can detect HCC at an early
stage which might be amenable to curative resection. AFP however can
be normal in patients with asymptomatic small tumors. The
reliability of ultrasound is operator dependent and many studies
have been in Japanese patients who have generally a thinner body
habitus which may make imaging easier than in Westerners. Studies
suggest that treatment of these early lesions may produce a true
survival benefit although there have been no randomized trials
reporting mortality reduction from screening[30].
This strategy can only be considered an option in high risk
populations, rather than on a general population basis.
CONCLUSION
Hepatocellular carcinoma is becoming a greater problem in
developed countries such as Australia with the wave of immigration
from countries affected by endemic viral hepatitis. Treatment
modalities are unsatisfactory once the tumor has spread and become
inoperable. Public health measures need to focus on the targeting of
risk factors and surveillance of at risk subgroups.
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