Patients

Data collection was retrospective. Seven hundred seventy-four patients were found from a prospectively maintained database at the Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital in China between 2014 and 2018. A multidisciplinary team first assessed all patients. Then we operated on patients with excellent liver function. The inclusion criteria were Child’s A or better liver disease and no clinical evidence of significant portal hypertension. After excluding patients according to the pre-specified criteria, among the remaining 503 patients, 446 nrHCC patients and 57 srHCC patients were eventually included for further analysis (Figure 1). The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013). Institutional review board approval of our hospital was obtained for this study. This was a retrospective clinical study, which only analyzed the earlier clinical data. The data processed did not reveal the patient’s identity information, so there was no need for ethical recognition and informed consent.

Flow chart showing patient enrollment and surgical treatment strategies. HCC, hepatocellular carcinoma; HIPEC, hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy.