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Therapeutic options for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are rapidly expanding. Such treatments include liver resection, liver transplantation, liver-directed therapies (such as chemoembolization and radiofrequency ablation), and systemic chemotherapy with sorafenib (JW Gastroenterol Jul 23 2008). Given the high degree of variability in how HCC affects patients, reliable data on survival of those with untreated HCC remain elusive.
To fill that knowledge gap, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 30 randomized, controlled trials of HCC treatments and focused on the survival of 1927 patients (mean age, 62) in the placebo and no-treatment control arms. Across the trials, the percentage of controls who were men ranged from 65% to …