ABSTRACT

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major health care problem worldwide because it is the fth leading cause of cancer mortality and the third most common cause of cancer-related death. HCC has two major clinical characteristics: (1) HCC develops from chronic hepatitis or liver cirrhosis at a high constant incidence (about 5-7%) per year; (2) even when HCC is initially detected at an early stage and can be treated radically, disease recurrence or secondary hepatic cancers develop at a high incidence (10-25%) per year [1,2]. Because of these features, HCC remains one of the cancers with the poorest outcomes, despite recent advances in diagnosis and treatment. Epidemiological studies predict that the number of deaths from HCC will increase by 2010-2015 [3].