CURRENT STATUS OF TRANSCATHETER ARTERIAL CHEMOEMBOLIZATION FOR HEPATOCELLULAR CARCINOMA

QING HE¹, YANG LIU², NING-NING YANG¹, YONG-SONG GUAN¹

¹Department of Oncology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China - ²Department of Psychiatry, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a lethal disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year worldwide. Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) is a widely used approach in clinical practice to treat HCC. Many patients with unresectable HCC benefited from this technique. Now, TACE has evolved into the first choice among non-surgical HCC’s for its mini- mally invasive nature and definite therapeutic effects. However, this technique was beset with relative high incidence of complica- tions plus low cure rate. For optimal TACE’s antitumor effect, many efforts have been made in varies aspects of TACE procedure including alterative contrast agent, combination therapies, newly developed embolizing agents and evaluation techniques et al. Therefore, this paper reviews recent advances in TACE for HCC, highlighting newly developed embolization agents and TACE-based integrated therapies in an attempts to improve local curability which may help to get closer to ultimate success of HCC treatment.