Is there a sex difference in postoperative prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma?

Background: Although men carry a higher risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) than women, it is still controversial whether men also have a poorer postoperative prognosis. A retrospective study was conducted to evaluate the postoperative prognostic predictors of HCC focusing on sex differences.

Methods: We enrolled 516 consecutive adult patients with HCC (118 women, 398 men), who received surgical resection between January 2000 and December 2007, and were followed-up for >10 years. Clinical and laboratory data together with postoperative outcomes were reviewed.

Results: At baseline, female patients had a higher anti-hepatitis C virus antibody prevalence (P = 0.002); lower hepatitis B virus surface antigen prevalence (P = 0.006); less microvascular invasion (P = 0.019); and lower alpha-fetoprotein (P = 0.023), bilirubin (P = 0.002), and alanine transaminase (P = 0.001) levels. Overall, there were no significant sex differences in terms of intrahepatic recurrence-free survival (RFS), distant metastasis-free survival (MFS), and overall survival (OS). However, subgroup analysis showed that women had favorable RFS (P = 0.019) and MFS (P = 0.034) in patients with alpha-fetoprotein ≤ 35 ng/mL, independent of other clinical variables (adjusted P = 0.008 and 0.043, respectively). Additionally, men had favorable OS in patients with prothrombin time (international normalized ratio [INR]) <1.1 (P = 0.033), independent of other clinical variables (adjusted P = 0.042).

Conclusions: Female sex is independently associated with favorable postoperative RFS and MFS in patients with alpha-fetoprotein ≤35 ng/mL, while male sex is independently associated with favorable OS in patients with prothrombin time INR <1.1.