Diagnostic Advances
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Nov 14, 2016; 22(42): 9279-9287
Published online Nov 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i42.9279
Practice guidelines for the pathological diagnosis of primary liver cancer: 2015 update
Wen-Ming Cong, Hong Bu, Jie Chen, Hui Dong, Yu-Yao Zhu, Long-Hai Feng, Jun Chen, Guideline Committee
Wen-Ming Cong, Hui Dong, Yu-Yao Zhu, Long-Hai Feng, Department of Pathology, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, The Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
Hong Bu, Department of Pathology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chendu 610041, Sichuan Province, China
Jie Chen, Department of Pathology, Beijing Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing 100730, China
Jun Chen, Department of Pathology, Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing 210005, Jiangsu Province, China
Author contributions: Cong WM, Bu H and Chen J designed the study and wrote the paper; Cong WM, Dong H, Zhu YY, Feng LH and Chen J conducted the literature research, data acquisition and manuscript preparation; Cong WM wrote the main paper; the Guideline Committee participated in the manuscript revision and commented on the manuscript at all stages.
Supported by the Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China No. 81221061 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China No. 81072026, No. 81272662 and No. 81472278.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest related to this work.
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: Wen-Ming Cong, MD, PhD, Department of Pathology, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, The Second Military Medical University, No. 225 Changhai Road, Shanghai, 200433, China. wmcong@smmu.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-21-81875191 Fax: +86-21-81875191
Received: March 1, 2016
Peer-review started: March 3, 2016
First decision: April 14, 2016
Revised: June 15, 2016
Accepted: August 8, 2016
Article in press: August 8, 2016
Published online: November 14, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Given the high prevalence of primary liver cancers in China, the present 2015 guidelines were formulated in response to the clinicopathological evidence amassed over the past 5 years. The guidelines included suggestions for a 7-point baseline sampling protocol, updated the definition of small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), described a grading system of microvascular invasion for routine pathological diagnosis, and included molecular diagnostic principles, such as the importance of clonal typing for determining the clonal original patterns and therapeutic strategy of postoperative recurrent and multinodule HCC.