Comment on “Evaluation of Antiviral Therapy Performed after Curative Therapy in Patients with HBV-Related Hepatocellular Carcinoma: An Updated Meta-Analysis”

Abstract EN

We read with interest the updated meta-analysis by Yuan et al.

[1] which investigated the role of nucleos(t)ide analog (NA) therapy for patients with hepatitis B virus (HBV) related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after surgery.

Even after curative resection or ablation, the incidence of HCC recurrence is very high [2].

However, no adjuvant and/or postoperative therapies with definite efficacy to prevent HCC recurrence are recommended by official guidelines.

HBV is the main cause of HCC in Asia.

In this point, Yuan and coworkers [1] performed an interesting and important updated meta-analysis in order to determine whether antiviral therapy with NA can prevent HCC recurrence and improve patients’ survival after surgery.

Their meta-analysis showed that NA therapy significantly reduced 1- and 3-year recurrence and significantly improved 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival and disease-free survival.

We feel that some of these results may need to be treated with caution.

And we would like to propose several important issues raised in this meta-analysis.