Integrating the new systemic treatment landscape and surgical therapy in hepatocellular carcinoma
Philipp K. Haber
, Felix Krenzien, Kaya Sarıbeyoğlu, Johann Pratschke, Wenzel Schöning
Department of Surgery, Charité University, Berlin, Germany
Abstract
The treatment landscape of hepatocellular carcinoma has evolved rapidly within the last decade. Minimally-invasive techniques have reached a new level of safety, affording surgeons to pursue more aggressive treatment strategies to ultimately improve oncological outcomes. These procedures have been increasingly applied to treat patients with more progressed tumors and in select case even patients with advanced stage disease confined to the liver. Concomitantly, a dramatic increase in research into immunotherapy has altered the treatment paradigm in advanced disease stages, where the emerging treatment regimens can provide durable responses in a subset of the patient population for whom prognosis is dramatically improved. These treatments are now tested in early-stage disease to address the pressing unmet need of high recurrence rates after resection and in intermediate stage to complement the proven efficacy of intraarterial embolization in delaying progression. This review provides an in-depth discussion of these trends and describes how the treatment landscape has already changed and which impediments remain.
Keywords: Hepatocellular carcinoma, surgery, liver, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, systemic therapy
Cite this article as: Haber PK, Krenzien F, Sarıbeyoğlu K, Pratschke J, Schöning W. Integrating the new systemic treatment landscape and surgical therapy in hepatocellular carcinoma. Turk J Surg 2024; 40 (1): 1-10.
Externally peer-reviewed.
No conflict of interest was declared by the authors.
The authors declared that this study has received no financial support.