European Radiology: Evaluation of response to yttrium-90 radioembolization in hepatocellular carcinoma using MRI

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver malignancy, accounting for 90% of all liver malignancies and the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide

However, 80% of patients were not eligible for curative treatment at the time of HCC diagnosis due to advanced tumor stage and/or background liver disease

Radiographic assessment of response after LRT is known to be challenging because lesions can exhibit heterogeneous necrosis and often do not initially decrease significantly in size

Recently, a study published in the journal European Radiology evaluated the diagnostic performance of gadoxetate disodium-enhanced MRI in predicting complete pathological necrosis (CPN) in HCC after TARE therapy using histopathology as a reference standard, for accurate clinical evaluation of treatment.

This retrospective study included 48 TARE-treated HCC patients (male/female: 36/12, mean age: 62 years), each of whom had a gadoxetate disodium MRI scan within 90 days of surgery

Histopathology revealed 71 HCCs (2.

This study demonstrates that subtraction (AP and PVP) and EASL criteria are independent predictors for evaluating CPN, with excellent diagnostic performance for CPN in TARE-treated HCC

Original source:

Naik Vietti Violi, Jeffrey Gnerre, Amy Law, et al.