Key clinical point: Improved survival among children vs adults with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) despite greater fibrolamellar histology prevalence and positive lymph node number and similar metastasis rates is a likely result of a more aggressive surgical approach.
Major finding: Although children vs adults had a higher prevalence of fibrolamellar HCC (32% vs 9%) and number of positive lymph nodes (35% vs 17%; P = .02) and comparable metastasis rates (30% vs 28%; P = .47), they had significantly better 1-year (81% vs 70%) and 5-year (55% vs 48%) overall survival and surgical intervention (74% vs 62%) rates (all P < .001).
Study details: This study stratified the data of 1520 patients with grade ≥1 HCC from the National Cancer Database by age: <21 years (children; n = 244) and 21-40 years (young adults; n = 1276).
Disclosures: No source of funding was reported. SJ Commander declared receiving financial support from several sources.
Source: Commander SJ et al. Improved survival and higher rates of surgical resection associated with hepatocellular carcinoma in children as compared to young adults. Int J Cancer. 2022 (Jul 16). Doi: 10.1002/ijc.34215