Prognostic roles of preoperative α-fetoprotein and des-γ-carboxy prothrombin in hepatocellular carcinoma patients
Makoto Meguro, Toru Mizuguchi, Toshihiko Nishidate, Kenji Okita, Masayuki Ishii, Shigenori Ota, Tomomi Ueki, Emi Akizuki, Koichi Hirata
Makoto Meguro, Toru Mizuguchi, Toshihiko Nishidate, Kenji Okita, Masayuki Ishii, Shigenori Ota, Tomomi Ueki, Emi Akizuki, Koichi Hirata, Department of Surgery, Surgical Oncology and Science, Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine, Chuo-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8543, Japan
Author contributions: Meguro M and Mizuguchi T contributed equally to this work; Meguro M and Mizuguchi T design this study, analyzed, interpreted and drafted the manuscript; Meguro M and Mizuguchi T, Nishidate T, Okita K, Ishii M, Ota S, Ueki T and Akizuki E acquire the data; Mizuguchi T and Hirata K contributed to statistical advice.
Supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, [Grant No. 24791437 and No. 26461920 (to Meguro M), No. 13377023 (to Hirata K), and No. 23591993 (to Mizuguchi T)]; A grant from the Yuasa Memorial Foundation was awarded to Mizuguchi T.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the institutional review boards of the Sapporo Medical University.
Informed consent: The study design conformed to the ethical guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and all study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: There are no conflict-of-interests for all co-authors.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Makoto Meguro, MD, PhD, Department of Surgery, Surgical Oncology and Science, Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine, South-1, West-16, Chuo-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8543, Japan. meguro@sapmed.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-11-6112111 Fax: +81-11-6131678
Received: September 30, 2014
Peer-review started: September 30, 2014
First decision: October 29, 2014
Revised: November 11, 2014
Accepted: December 14, 2014
Article in press: December 16, 2014
Published online: April 28, 2015
