Benefits of the 8th American Joint Committee on Cancer System for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Staging

Purpose We aimed to emphasize the prognostic impact of differences included in the 8th versus the previous 7th edition of AJCC (American Joint Committee on Cancer) Cancer Staging manual for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods A number of 87 consecutive HCCs were retrospectively evaluated and staged, using the 7th and 8th edition of AJCC staging systems. The clinicopathological parameters were correlated with the overall survival rate. No preoperative chemotherapy was received by any of the patients. Results According to the 7th edition of AJCC manual, 52 of the 87 cases were staged as pT2 and 35 as pT1. After restaging, according to the 8th edition, 23 of the 52 pT2 cases were understaged as pT1b, and the rest of the 29 remained as pT2. Regarding the 35 HCCs classified as pT1, using 7th edition, all of them were restaged as pT1a. Compared to the 7th staging system, using the 8th edition of AJCC manual, the percentage of pT2 tumors significantly decreased, from 59.77 to 33.33%. The patient’s gender, age, tumor focality, and grade of differentiation did not prove to have any prognostic value. Regarding pT stage, it does not influence the overall survival rate, independently from the used staging system. Conclusion The staging criteria, in the most recent edition of AJCC, are simplified and allowed tumor understaging. These changes do not have independent prognostic value. The prognostic impact of pT understaging should be evaluated in larger cohorts.