Hepatocellular Carcinoma with Portal Vein Tumor Thrombus versus Hepatocellular Carcinoma with Biliary Tumor Thrombus: Better or Worse Prognoses? [Letter]

Jin-Kai Feng, Ju-Xian Sun, Zong-Han Liu, Shu-Qun Cheng

Department of Hepatic Surgery VI, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200433, People’s Republic of China

Correspondence: Shu-Qun Cheng
Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, Second Military Medical University, 225 Changhai Road, Shanghai, 200433, People’s Republic of China
Tel +86 21-81875251
Fax +86 21-65562400
Email chengshuqun@aliyun.com


Dear editor
We read with great interest the recently published article in Cancer Management and Research by Yang et al, ¹ in which they conducted a retrospective study to compare the long-term prognosis between hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with portal vein tumor thrombus (PVTT) and those with bile duct tumor thrombus (BDTT). The authors reported that HCC patients with BDTT had worse overall survival (OS) and a higher tumor recurrence rate compared to patients with PVTT. This article, with its novelty and clinical implication, adds to the current knowledge and provides the rationale for further study to assess the prognostic differences among HCC patients with distinct types of tumor thrombus. However, we would like to raise the following concerns.
First, the number of patients in this study is too small to draw a conclusive result regarding whether the prognosis of BDTT patients is inferior or superior to that of PVTT patients. Sufficient sample size is a critical factor to guarantee the validity and credibility of scientific reports. Therefore, we suggest the authors enlarge the sample size.
 
View the original paper by Yang and colleagues

A Response to Letter has been published for this article.