Tumor necrosis as a poor prognostic predictor on postoperative survival of patients with solitary small hepatocellular carcinoma

Table 2 Univariate and multivariate analyses of tumor necrosis and clinicopathologic variables in patients with primary small hepatocellular carcinoma^a

Characteristics	P value	Hazard Ratio (95% CI)
Univariate analysis
Gender (Male vs. Female)	0.632	0.825 (0.374–1.816)
Age (≤ 48.0^b vs. > 48.0)	0.957	1.014 (0.615–1.672)
AFP (≤ 20 ng/ml vs. > 20 ng/ml)	0.432	1.230 (0.734–2.059)
ALT (≤ 40 μ/l vs. > 40 μ/l)	0.253	1.337 (0.812–2.201)
Tumor size (≤ 2.5^c cm vs. > 2.5 cm)	0.001	2.431 (1.443–4.093)
Differentiation (well-moderate vs. poor-undifferentiated)	0.512	1.215 (0.679–2.175)
Vascular invasion (absent vs. present)	< 0.001	3.033 (1.827–5.035)
Envelope (absent vs. present)	0.758	0.920 (0.544–1.559)
Liver cirrhosis (absent vs. present)	0.102	1.516 (0.921–2.495)
Tumor necrosis (absent vs. present)	< 0.001	2.821 (1.643–4.842)
Multivariate analysis
Tumor size (≤ 2.5 cm vs. > 2.5 cm)	0.006	2.083 (1.229–3.529)
Vascular invasion (absent vs. present)	< 0.001	2.663 (1.598–4.437)
Tumor necrosis (absent vs. present)	0.005	2.208 (1.272–3.833)

^aThe analyses were performed with the use of Cox proportional-hazards regression; ^bMedian age; ^cMedian size; AFP indicates alpha-fetoprotein; ALT indicates alanine aminotranferease

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