Improving surgery outcomes for high-risk liver cancer patients

Mari Nakazawa is a clinical research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center (MD, USA). Her recent research entitled “Impact of neoadjuvant immunotherapy on recurrence-free survival in patients with high-risk localized hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)” suggests that the criteria for surgery to treat high-risk, early-stage liver cancer might be too narrow. In this retrospective study, it was observed that patients who were given neoadjuvant immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) had comparable outcomes to those who underwent upfront surgery. Specifically, 94.4% of patients receiving ICIs underwent successful margin-negative surgical resection. The reported median recurrence-free survival was 44.8 months for the ICI group,...