Comparison of Modified Child-pugh (MCP), Albumin-bilirubin (ALBI), and Child-pugh (CP) score for predicting of survival in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients Treated with Transcatheter Arterial Chemoembolization.

Background: Both modified Child-Pugh (MCP) and Albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grade were reported that simpler, more objective and evidence-based alternative to the Child-Pugh (CP) class for assessing liver function.

Aims: To investigate whether the MCP and ALBI grade could better evaluate the liver reserve of Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) patients treated with TACE (transcatheter arterial chemoembolization) than CP grade.

Methods: Three hundred seventy-six consecutive HCC patients treated with TACE between December 2007 and October 2011 were enrolled. The baseline characteristics and clinical information were collected. Homogeneity and discriminatory ability were compared between the MCP grade and ALBI class or CP grade.

Results: Compared with the CP and ALBI, the MCP grade had a higher predictive accuracy for overall survival (OS) in terms of homogeneity and discriminatory ability. Most of the HCC patients had CP class A disease (84.0%) at presentation, and within this CP class, although the ALBI grade revealed two clear and nonoverlapping groups, the MCP grade revealed three clearly different prognostic groups. Both in the ALBI grade 1 or ALBI grade 2 group, the MCP grade still showed a significant progressive decrease in OS from the smallest to the largest grades, but the CP class was unsatisfactory in stratifying these patients.

Conclusions: The stratification ability and prognostic predictive power of the MCP grade for HCC patients treated with TACE may be better than that of the ALBI grade or CP class.