US-guided percutanous microwave ablation for early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma in elderly patients is as effective as in younger patients: A 10-year experience.

Objective: To compare the overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and liver-cancer-specific survival (LCSS) of elderly (≥65 years) and younger patients (< 65 years) with early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using ultrasound-guided percutaneous microwave ablation (US-PMMA).

Materials And Methods: From January 2002 to December 2017, 510 elderly and 1053 younger patients were diagnosed with early-stage HCC according to the Milan criteria. All of these patients were treatment-naïve to US-PMMA. Baseline characteristics were collected to identify any risk factors to determine the survival outcomes. OS, DFS, and LCSS probabilities were calculated with the Kaplan-Meier method and compared using the Log-rank test.

Results: Complete ablation was achieved in all patients. Elderly patients were more likely to be, hepatitis C virus infection, comorbidities, cirrhosis, larger tumors, poor liver functional reservation, more ablation points, longer ablation time, longer hospital stays, and higher hospitalization costs (P < 0.05). Over the follow-up period (12-156 months), no significant differences were detected in OS, DFS, and LCSS between the two groups ( P = 0.092, 0.318, and 0.183). r-GT, ALB and ablation session were significant factors for OS, r-GT and ALB for LCSS, and cirrhosis, tumor number, AFP and ablation points for RFS in the multivariate analysis, respectively. No treatment-related deaths occurred in the two groups. Any complications were treated as appropriate.

Conclusions: Although advanced age and comorbidities are intrinsic factors in elderly HCC patients, similar survival outcomes were obtained in elderly and younger HCC patients treated by US-PMWA, despite elderly patients having more comorbidities.