Objectives: Percutaneous injection therapy using acetic acid or pure ethanol is effective for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, its efficacy in HCC patients with coexisting chronic renal insufficiency (CRI), defined as a serum creatinine level of 1.5 mg/dl or above, is not known. This study compared the survival in HCC patients with and without CRI undergoing percutaneous injection therapy.
Methods: A total of 172 patients (129 male; age 67 +/- 10 years) during a 4-year period were included. Thirty-five of these patients had CRI (creatinine level 2.7 +/- 1.8 mg/dl) before treatment Fourteen patient- and tumour-related parameters were included for survival analysis.
Results: The mean follow-up period was 24 +/- 9 (range 4-40) months. Seven (20%) and 39 (28%) patients in the groups with and without CRI, respectively, died. There was no significant survival difference in patients with and without CRI. The cause of death was related to renal failure in two (29%) patients in the former group and one (3%) patient in the latter group. For the patients with CRI, the presence of ascites and a serum creatinine level of 2.3 mg/dl or above were poor prognostic factors in the univariate analysis; the latter was the only independent factor predicting a poor survival by the Cox multivariate proportional model.
Conclusions: CRI does not affect overall survival in HCC patients undergoing percutaneous injection therapy. However, a serum creatinine level of 2.3 mg/dl or above is an independent poor prognostic predictor among patients with existing CRI.