The size and number of tumors are important prognostic indicators for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, it is difficult to assess the prognosis for patients with a variable number and size of tumors. By combining these two factors, we investigated the role and prognostic accuracy of total tumor volume (TTV) for HCC.

Hepatoid carcinoma of the pancreas is extremely rare. This article tries to summarize the clinical features and outcomes of pancreatic hepatoid carcinoma. The data pool for analysis includes the case we encountered with hepatoid carcinoma of the pancreas and the reported cases in the literature. Twenty-three cases of hepatoid carcinoma of the pancreas were analyzed. This tumor occurred more frequently in male than in female patients (69.6 vs. 30.4 %). Tumor sizes range from 0.5 to 11.0 cm with median of 6.0 cm. The most common symptom was epigastric pain (36.4 %). When the tumor locates at pancreatic head, nausea/vomiting (62.5 %) is more common, followed by jaundice and epigastric pain (50.0 %). For those at pancreatic body-tail, 42.9 % of the patients presented no symptom. Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) was abnormally elevated in 60 % of the cases. Hepatoid carcinoma in the pancreas could be either pure form or mixed form with other malignancy (40.9 %), with the most common coexisted pathology of malignant neuroendocrine tumor (22.7 %). Metastasis occurred in 36.4 % of the cases at the diagnosis of this tumor, including liver metastasis in 31.8 % and lymph node metastasis in 21.1 %. The overall 1-year survival rate was 71.1 % and 5-year 40.4 %, with a median of 13.0 months. Unresectability, hepatic, and lymph node metastases are associated with negative impact on survival outcome. Elevation of serum AFP may be a clue leading to the diagnosis of pancreatic hepatoid carcinoma. This tumor could be mixed form with other malignancy. Surgical resection should be the treatment of choice whenever possible.

The purpose of this study was to compare the image noise-reducing abilities of iterative model reconstruction (IMR) with those of traditional filtered back projection (FBP) and statistical iterative reconstruction (IR) in abdominal computed tomography (CT) imagesThis institutional review board-approved retrospective study enrolled 103 patients; informed consent was waived. Urinary bladder (n = 83) and renal cysts (n = 44) were used as targets for evaluating imaging quality. Raw data were retrospectively reconstructed using FBP, statistical IR, and IMR. Objective image noise and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were calculated and analyzed using one-way analysis of variance. Subjective image quality was evaluated and analyzed using Wilcoxon signed-rank test with Bonferroni correction.Objective analysis revealed a reduction in image noise for statistical IR compared with that for FBP, with no significant differences in SNR. In the urinary bladder group, IMR achieved up to 53.7% noise reduction, demonstrating a superior performance to that of statistical IR. IMR also yielded a significantly superior SNR to that of statistical IR. Similar results were obtained in the cyst group. Subjective analysis revealed reduced image noise for IMR, without inferior margin delineation or diagnostic confidence.IMR reduced noise and increased SNR to greater degrees than did FBP and statistical IR. Applying the IMR technique to abdominal CT imaging has potential for reducing the radiation dose without sacrificing imaging quality.

Immunotherapy benefits selected cases of gastric cancer (GC), but the correlation between biomarkers and prognosis is still unclear. Fifty-two patients with GC who underwent immunotherapy were enrolled from June 2016 to December 2020. Their clinical features and biomarkers—microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H), programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) combined positive score (CPS), and Epstein–Barr encoding region (EBER)—were analyzed. Eight patients had MSI-H, five patients had EBER, 29 patients had CPS ≥ 1, and 20 patients had no biomarker. The overall response rates (ORRs) of the MSI-H, EBER, PD-L1 CPS ≥ 1, and all-negative group were 75%, 60%, 44.8%, and 15%, respectively. Compared with that of the all-negative group, progression-free survival (PFS) was better in the MSI-H (p = 0.018), CPS ≥ 5 (p = 0.012), and CPS ≥ 10 (p = 0.006) groups, but not in the EBER (p = 0.2) and CPS ≥ 1 groups (p = 0.35). Ten patients had combined biomarkers, CPS ≥ 1 with either MSI-H or EBER. The ORRs were 66.7% for CPS ≥ 1 and MSI-H and 75% for CPS ≥ 1 and EBER. PFS was better in patients with combined biomarkers (p = 0.01). MSI-H, EBER, and CPS are useful biomarkers for predicting the efficacy of immunotherapy.

Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is the standard of care for intermediate stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We aimed to identify unsuitable cases who were at risk of ALBI-grade migration by TACE. Consecutive 531 BCLC-B HCC patients undergoing TACE were reviewed, and factors associated with ALBI-grade migration were analyzed. There were 129 (24.3%) patients experienced acute ALBI-grade migration after TACE, and 85 (65.9%) out of the 129 patients had chronic ALBI-grade migration. Incidences of acute ALBI-grade migration were 13.9%, 29.0% for patients within or beyond up-to-7 criteria (p < 0.001) and 20.0%, 36.2% for patients within or beyond up-to-11 criteria (p < 0.001), respectively. HBV infection, tumor size plus tumor number criteria were risk factors associated with acute ALBI-grade migration. Bilobar tumor involvement was the risk factor of chronic ALBI-grade migration in patients with acute ALBI-grade migration. Up-to-eleven (p = 0.007) performed better than up-to-seven (p = 0.146) to differentiate risk of dynamic ALBI score changes. Moreover, ALBI-grade migration to grade 3 has adverse effect on survival. In conclusion, tumor burden beyond up-to-eleven was associated with ALBI-grade migration after TACE, indicating that up-to-eleven can select TACE-unsuitable HCC patients who are at risk of liver function deterioration.