Prognostic factors of disease-free survival in postoperative patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Background Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a primary malignancy of the hepatocyte with high risk of invasion, metastasis and poor prognosis, which leads to a high mortality rate in recent years. This study aims to investigate the independent prognosis factors of DFS(disease free survival) in hepatocellular carcinoma patients after radical hepatectomy.Methods This study retrospectively analyzed 358 patients admitted to the 1st Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical College from December 2009 to December 2014. Categorical variables were analyzed by chi-square test. The survival curve was plotted by kaplan-meier method and tested by log-rank method. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed to determine the prognostic factors.Results Among the 344 patients with liver cancer, 298 cases (86.63%) are young patients (< 70 years), and 46 cases (13.37%) were elderly patients (≥ 70 years). There were no significant difference in gender, smoking history, alcohol consumption history, Body Mass Index (BMI), number of cancer nodules, tumor diameter, differentiation degree and TNM stage between the young and elderly groups (P > 0.05). However, history of hepatitis B and liver cirrhosis were more common in young patients than elderly (P=0.017, P༝0.000). The Kaplan-Meier curves indicated that elderly patients (higher than 70 years), TNM I-II stage and no history of hepatitis B had longer DFS. The univariate and multivariate analyses showed that age, TNM stage, History of hepatitis B were the independent factors for DFS.Conclusions Our findings suggested that age, TNM stage, history of hepatitis B were independent factors for predicting DFS of primary hepatocellular carcinoma patients. Patients older than 70 years had a better prognosis than young patients. Patients with early TNM stage and no history of hepatitis B had longer DFS.