Hepatocellular carcinoma risk scores: ready to use in 2015?

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers in the world, with more than 0.6 million deaths annually [1,2]. The incidence of liver cancer is highest in sub-Saharan Africa, and Central and Southeast Asia, where the prevalence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is high [1,2]. However, only a proportion of patients with chronic infection of HBV and/or HCV will develop HCC. The lifetime risk of developing HCC from 30 to 75 years, for men and women, was 27.38 and 7.99% in chronic hepatitis B patients, and 23.73 and 16.71% in chronic hepatitis C patients [3]. Hepatocarcinogenesis is a multistage process with the involvement of a multifactorial etiology [4]. The individual variation in disease risk implies the existence of various risk factors that drive the progression from hepatitis through cirrhosis to HCC in the natural history of chronic hepatitis B and C [5,6]. These risk predictors include viral, host and environmental factors that may be used to triage chronic viral hepatitis patients into groups with high and low risk of HCC for referral to different clinical managements.

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