Prognostic benefit of preoperative transarterial chemoembolization in upfront resectable large hepatocellular carcinoma: a multicentric propensity score based analysis of European high-volume centers

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have a dismal prognosis and any effective neoadjuvant treatment has been validated to date. We aimed to investigate the role of neoadjuvant transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) in upfront resectable HCC larger than 5 cm. Methods: This is a multicentric retrospective study comparing outcomes of large HCC undergoing TACE followed by surgery or liver resection alone before and after propensity-score matching (PSM). Results: A total of 384 patients were included of whom 60 (15.6%) received TACE. This group did not differ from upfront resected cases neither in terms of disease-free survival (p = 0.246) nor in overall survival (p = 0.276). After PSM, TACE still did not influence long-term outcomes (p = 0.935 and p = 0.172, for DFS and OS respectively). In subgroup analysis, TACE improved OS only in HCC >= 10 cm (p = 0.045), with a borderline significance after portal vein embolization/ligation (p = 0.087) and in single HCC (p = 0.052). Conclusions: TACE should not be systematically performed in all resectable large HCC. Selected cases could however potentially benefit from this procedure, as patients with huge and single tumors or those necessitating of a PVE.