Preoperative Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy to Portal Vein Tumour Thrombus in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Clinical and Pathological Analysis

The prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with portal vein tumour thrombus (PVTT) is poor. We conducted a prospective study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of tri-modality therapy, including preoperative stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) and surgery, followed by hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy (HAIC) in HCC patients with PVTT. In this report, we investigated the pathology of the irradiated PVTT specimen in resected cases and SBRT-related acute toxicity. A total of 8 HCC patients with PVTT received preoperative SBRT targeting the PVTT at a dose of 48 Gy in 4 fractions at our institute from 2012 to 2016. Of the eight patients, six underwent surgery, while the remaining two did not because of disease progression. At the pathological examination, all patients’ irradiated PVTT specimens showed necrotic tissue, and three of six patients showed complete pathological response. Two patients showed 30% necrosis with high degeneration and one patient, with 30% necrosis without degeneration, was the only recurrent case found during the follow-up period (median: 22.5, range: 5.9–49.6 months). No SBRT-related acute toxicity worse than grade 2 was observed from SBRT to surgery. In conclusion, the preoperative SBRT for HCC was pathologically effective and the acute toxicities were tolerable.