Do We Need to Be Limited by Matching Milan Criteria for Survival in Living Donor Liver Transplantation?

Abstract

Purpose: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second leading cause of cancer deaths and the 7th most common cancer. It has two characteristic features: being advanced stage at diagnosis and association with liver cirrhosis. Liver transplantation (LT) offers the only curative option to treat both components of the disease. The Milan criteria have been extensively used for selecting patients with HCC for LT. However, using Milan criteria, we can only transplant 30% of the patients. The aim of the present review is to evaluate the role of LT in HCC beyond the Milan criteria.

Methods: We evaluated the studies that have introduced extended criteria to select patients with HCC beyond the Milan criteria. We evaluated the outcomes in terms of disease-free survival rates and HCC recurrences.

Results: There are patients with tumors that are beyond Milan criteria that could benefit from LT. Selection of these patients has paramount importance in the era of living donor liver transplantation. Current expanded criteria depend on either the bulk of the tumor or the additional surrogate markers of tumor biology such as alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and des-gamma carboxyprothrombin (DCP).

Conclusion: There is no ideal marker or an extended criterion for selecting patients with HCC beyond the Milan criteria and it needs further research to find an effective biomarker that has prognostic significance to select patients with advanced tumors.

Keywords: Biomarkers; Extended criteria; Hepatocellular carcinoma; Milan criteria.