Anatomic resection and wide resection margin play an important role in hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma with peritumoural micrometastasis.

Background Anatomic hepatectomy and wide resection margin may improve surgical outcome of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but not everyone gain survival benefit. It remains unclear what kind of patients would benefit from those surgical methods. We investigated the factors affecting survival of patients with HCC, with special attention paid to the surgical methods and pathological factors. Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on 231 patients with hepatitis B-related HCC who underwent surgery from August 2011 to November 2013 in authors' institute. The survival analysis included the following variables: gender, age, viral load, alpha-fetoprotein, des-gamma-carboxy prothrombin, tumour size, cirrhosis, blood transfusion, complications, resection method, resection margin, microvascular invasion (mVI), peritumoural satellite nodule, recurrence time and recurrent burden. Results The median follow-up time was 59 months. A total of 196 patients (84.9%) recurred and 151 patients (65.4%) deceased due to the disease. Multivariate analysis showed that cirrhosis, mVI and periturmoral satellite nodules were independent risk factors affecting overall survival after operation. The comparison between anatomic resection and local resection, and wide resection margin and narrow resection margin showed no significant differences for recurrence-free survival and overall survival, respectively (P = 0.089 and 0.068, 0.108 and 0.122). Stratified analysis revealed that anatomic resection and wide resection margin surgery improved survival when mVI or peritumoural satellite existed. Conclusion Anatomic resection and wide resection margin are effective methods to improve the surgical outcome of HCC with periturmoral micrometastasis, although tumour characteristics affect patients' survival more than surgical techniques.