Study population

In this retrospective study, medical records of selected patients were reviewed. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Nanjing Medical University. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. All patients included in this study signed an informed consent to release their medical record data for research purposes. All patients were non-resective. The inclusion criteria were: age >18 years: HCC diagnosis based on the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Guidelines¹⁵; intermediate stage HCC (Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer [BCLC] stage A or B); prior history of therapies for the disease; well compensated liver function classified as Child-Pugh Class A or B; absence of main trunk or segmental portal thrombosis; Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status score of 0–2; and TACE treatment with CalliSpheres (CalliSpheres® Beads; Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co.Ltd., Jiangsu, China). Sixty patients with early and intermediate stage HCC referred to our department for TACE treatment October 2016 and December 2018 met the inclusion criteria and were included in the final analysis. These patients were treated with TACE using CalliSpheres of either 100–300 µm (small bead group) or 300–500 µm (medium bead group). Symptom control was assessed 3 months after completion of the TACE procedure.