Monocentric experiences of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for advanced hepatocellular carcinomas (BCLC-C)

Hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) are highly malignant primary liver cancers with poor prognosis and limited treatment options in advanced stages of disease. Treatment of HCC requires interdisciplinary discussion and multimodal therapy approaches. Beside established loco-regional and systemic therapies, stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) gained increasing importance over recent years. First results of early clinical studies indicate high rates of local control with a good safety profile. In the present work, we evaluated our single center experiences with SBRT in patients with advanced HCCs. Ten patients with 16 SBRTs were included and retrospectively analyzed in this case collection. All patients presented in advanced tumor stages with vascular invasion and/ or metastases, but preserved liver function. Two patients were treated only with SBRT, two after TACE and six patients received SBRT in addition to systemic therapy. In most of the cases SBRT were applied to intrahepatic lesions. Large tumor thromboses, lymph nodes as well as bone metastases were irradiated in one, three and five fractions with a median overall dose of 38 Gy. We observed a good local tumor control with a good safety profile in all cases. No severe complications occurred in combination to sequential as well as additive approach to loco-regional or systemic treatments. In conclusion, our experiences confirm results of early clinical studies indicating safe use and good local control rates also in advanced stages of HCC with preserved liver function.