Hepatic fibrosis and short-term clinical efficacy after hepatic artery embolization for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma using doxorubicin-eluting HepaSphere

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is most common malignancies around world. Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) is recognized as the first-line treatment for HCC by NCCN, and its efficacy is widely reported. However, repeated TACE induces hepatic fibrosis. How to reduce hepatic fibrosis and retard cirrhosis is an urgent problem in treatment of HCC. To verify the efficacy of doxorubicin-eluting HepaSphere for TACE in the treatment of unresectable HCC. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 91 patients with unresectable HCC underwent TACE from June 2015 to June 2018. Among which, 51 cases were treated with HepaSphere-and 40 cases were treated with iodized oil. The primary endpoint was got according to the Modified Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (mRECIST). Type IV collagen (IV-C), layer mucin (LN), amino-terminal propeptide of type III procollagen (PIIINP), and hyaluronic acid (HA) were tested before and after TACE treatment. Results: Serologic factors of the groups were re-examined 3 days after TACE, which showed higher ALT and AST in the conventional) TACE group than in the HepaSphere-TACE group (P<0.05). The postoperative efficacies were evaluated according to the mRECIST criteria. No difference in the short-term efficacy between these two groups (P>0.05) were found. Moreover, serologic factors for fibrosis were further re-examined 6 months later, showing no differences for IV-C and PIIINP (P=0.906 and 0.574, respectively). However, LN and HA were slightly higher in C-TACE group than HepaSphere-TACE group (P=0.045 and 0.048, respectively). Conclusions: HepaSphere-TACE is prevents the occurrence of late hepatic fibrosis effectively.