Aggressive surgical approach in patients with adrenal-only metastases from hepatocellular carcinoma enables higher survival rates than standard systemic therapy.

Background: Although guidelines recommend systemic therapy even in patients with limited extrahepatic metastases from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a few recent studies suggested a potential benefit for resection of extrahepatic metastases. However, the benefit of adrenal resection (AR) for adrenal-only metastases (AOM) from HCC was not proved yet. This is the first study to compare long-term outcomes of AR to those of sorafenib in patients with AOM from HCC.

Methods: The patients with adrenal metastases (AM) from HCC were identified from the electronic records of the institution between January 2002 and December 2018. Those who presented AM and other sites of extrahepatic disease were excluded. Furthermore, the patients with AOM who received other therapies than AR or sorafenib were excluded.

Results: A total of 34 patients with AM from HCC were treated. Out of these, 22 patients had AOM, 6 receiving other treatment than AR or sorafenib. Eventually, 8 patients with AOM underwent AR (AR group), while 8 patients were treated with sorafenib (SOR group). The baseline characteristics of the two groups were not significantly different in terms of age, sex, number and size of the primary tumor, timing of AM diagnosis, Child-Pugh and ECOG status. After a median follow-up of 15.5 months, in the AR group, the 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival rates (85.7%, 42.9%, and 0%, respectively) were significantly higher than those achieved in the SOR group (62.5%, 0% and 0% at 1-, 3- and 5-year, respectively) (P = 0.009). The median progression-free survival after AR (14 months) was significantly longer than that after sorafenib therapy (6 months, P = 0.002).

Conclusions: In patients with AOM from HCC, AR was associated with significantly higher overall and progression-free survival rates than systemic therapy with sorafenib. These results could represent a starting-point for future phase II/III clinical trials.