Objective  To analyze clinical features and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (cHCC) patients after liver resection, so as to clarify the prognostic risk factors.

  Methods  We retrospectively reviewed the data of patients who underwent mesohepatectomy for cHCC at Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Cancer Hospital between October 2006 and December 2014.The patients were assigned into three subgroups according to disease-free survival (DFS):high risk (DFS ≤1 year), middle risk (1 year < DFS ≤3 years), and low risk (DFS >3 years).Clinicopathological characteristics were compared and prognostic factors were evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses.

  Results  In total, 173 patients were reviewed.The median overall survival (OS) in the high-risk group was 13.5 months compared with 24.0 months in the middle-risk group and 45.5 months in the lowrisk group.Univariate analysis showed that liver capsule invasion (P=0.022), tumors adjacent to major vascular vessels (< 1 cm)(P < 0.01), HCC size >50 mm (P=0.012), presence of microvascular invasion (P < 0.001), tumor invasive growth (P < 0.001), and preoperative transarterial chemoembolization (TACE; P=0.028) were significant risk factors for recurrence.The main risk factors for OS were male gender (P=0.013), alpha-fetoprotein >200 ng/mL (P=0.005), tumor size >50 mm (P=0.013), adjacent to major vascular vessels (P < 0.001), high Edmondson-Steiner differentiation grade (P=0.003), preoperative TACE (P=0.010), and tumor invasive growth (P=0.001).Cox multivariate analysis demonstrated that tumors adjacent (< 1 cm) to major vascular trunks and tumor invasive growth were independent prognostic factors for both DFS and OS.In total, 40.5% patients in the high-risk group had both risk factors; this percentage was 13.4% in the middle-risk group and 3.1% in the low-risk group (P=0.001).A prognostic model including the above 9 factors were created based on Logistic regression to predict the percentage of patients belonging to the high-risk group.The Results showed that the prediction accuracy continued to increase with the number of more factors added.When all the 9 factors were included, the predictive percentage was 82.1%.

  Conclusions  :cHCC patients in the high-risk group had more risk factors than those in the middle-and low-risk groups.A prognostic model containing these factors may provide accurate prediction of survival or risk stratification, and cHCC patients with these risk factors should be candidates for aggressive following-up and adjuvant therapy.