Objective: Epidemiological evidence suggests that many types of cancer, including breast, pancreas, lung, colorectal and kidney cancers in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for up to 90% of all primary liver malignancies. Liver transplantation (LT) is the only treatment modality for improved outcomes in patients with end-stage liver disease and HCC. We aimed to investigate the importance of DM on survival and recurrence and the relationship between DM and other prognostic factors in HCC patients undergoing LT.
Methods: This study included a retrospective analysis 200 patients with histologically confirmed HCC. patients were divided into two groups as DM and non-DM the primary end points in the present study were oncologic outcomes such as the recurrence rate, disease-free survival and overall survival of the HCC patients with or without DM.
Results: The diabetic and non-diabetic groups were not significantly different for, locoregional therapy, tumor recurrences, tumor differentiation, microvascular invasion (MVI), follow-up period, Child-Pugh score, alpha fetoprotein value, number of HCC lesions, body mass index value, and death rate ratio. However, model for end stage liver disease score was significantly higher in the diabetic group than in the non-diabetic group. There was no significant difference in the predicted disease-free survival and overall survival between the non-diabetic and the diabetic groups.
Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that there is no difference in HCC recurrence and survival between transplanted patients with and without DM. We revealed that characteristic features such as MVI, pathological grade of the tumor, number and size of the tumor have prognostic importance. LT can be chosen as a DM patients with HCC without changing long-term recurrence and survival results.