Angiographic arterio-venous shunt and venous thrombosis in the prognosis of hepatoma.

Angiograms and clinical data for 249 patients with hepatoma were evaluated, with particular attention paid to the arteriovenous (A-V) shunt and venous thrombosis (including occlusion). There were 43 cases (17.3%) with A-V shunt and 140 cases (56.2%) with venous thrombosis. A statistically significant difference in survival was noted among the unresectable patients with and without these vascular changes. Furthermore, in the resectable patients, presence of venous thrombosis also showed a poor prognosis. A-V shunt did not influence the survival in the unresectable patients with venous thrombosis, and 93.0% of A-V shunt was associated with venous thrombosis. This seemed to imply that these two vascular changes might be the same entity. In the presence of either A-V shunt or venous thrombosis, the survival rate in the surgical group was still better than that of medical groups treated by either transarterial embolization (TAE) or conservative methods. Most of the A-V shunt (81.4%) and venous thrombosis (56.4%) occurred in the diffuse type of hepatoma, and the prognosis for unresectable patients was the worst in this type, with a mean survival time of 3 months. Since A-V shunt and venous thrombosis are factors in poor prognosis and occur frequently, careful preoperative evaluation of these vascular changes is mandatory. However, in patients with localized tumor, coexisting with such vascular involvement, surgical resection is still recommended.