Prevalencia y características imagenológicas de hepatocarcinoma en pacientes sometidos a valoración pretrasplante hepático en el Hospital Luis Vernaza periodo 2015 - 2017.

Abstract

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the main causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide and liver transplantation together with surgical resection are the only curative treatments in these cases. Objective: To know the prevalence and radiological features of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients who are undergoing pretransplant evaluation. Methodology: A total of 114 patients undergoing pretransplant evaluation at Hospital Luis Vernaza were included in this study. Eighty-four of which met the inclusion criteria, 35 women and 49 men. Demographic data and laboratory results were collected, as well as reports from imaging studies such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance. Results: The most common cause of patients undergoing pretransplant evaluation was non- alcoholic steatohepatitis with 36 patients (42.9%), followed by autoimmune cirrhosis with 17 patients (20.2%). Regarding the radiological features, 81 patients (96.4%) underwent dynamic computer tomography, while only 3 patients (3.6%) underwent magnetic resonance imaging to assess their pathology. Of the total of 84 patients, 32 patients (38.09%) presented liver nodules, 29 patients (34.5%) presented between 1 to 5 liver nodules and 3 (3.6%) of them presented more than 5 nodules. Eleven (37.9%) out of the 32 patients who presented liver nodules had a diagnosis of HCC. The nodular size of 6 of these 11 patients corresponded to <10mm, 3 patients were in the range of 20 to 50 mm and 2 patients >50 mm. Finally, out of these 11 patients 10 of them presented 1 to 5 nodules and only 1 had> 5 nodules.