Impact of Tumor Size on Stiffness of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Measured Using the Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse Technique

10.6501/CJM.202203_20(1).0001

Pei-Yuan Su；Chen-Te Chou；Yao-Li Chen；Hui-Ting Hsu；Yu-Chun Hsu；Wei-Wen Su

acoustic radiation force impulse ； hepatocellular carcinoma ； tumor size

The Changhua Journal of Medicine

20卷1期（2022 / 03 / 01）

1 - 8

英文

Ultrasound elastography techniques have been used to measure the stiffness of focal liver lesions including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the results have been inconsistent. In this study, we investigated the contradictory results by examining the relationships between tumor stiffness and histologic features of HCC. We retrospectively enrolled 51 patients with HCC diagnosed using multiphase contrast-enhanced computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging and measured the HCC tumor stiffness using the acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) technique before surgical resection. Correlations between the stiffness value and histologic findings after surgery were then examined. The mean age of the patients was 66 ± 10 years, and 42 (82%) were men. The mean ARFI value of HCC was 1.98 ± 0.89, and the mean tumor size was 5.3 ± 4.4 cm. There was a weak but statistically significant positive correlation between tumor size and ARFI value (r = 0.288, p = 0.041). No statistically significant relationships between HCC stiffness and clinical parameters (e.g., age, gender, fibrosis stage of background liver, HCC histology grade, and location or angiolymphatic invasion) were observed. After multivariate analysis, the tumor size was the only independent statistically significant factor related to the ARFI value of HCC (p = 0.041). The study revealed that stiffness of HCC measured using ARFI was greater in larger tumor size of HCCs.