Accurately Predicting Postoperative Complications in Liver Cancer

For a study published in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery, researchers aimed to create a tool that could predict perioperative complications and long-term survival after liver resection for primary liver cancer using the Comprehensive Complication Index. Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) undergoing hepatectomy from 1990 to 2020 were studied. Of 1,411 patients (HCC: 997; ICC: 414), most were male (70.9%), with a median age of 66. According to the study results, 49.5% experienced complications postoperatively, including 7.9% major ones. Although 55.1% of patients had favorable risk complication-overall survival (CompOS) profiles, 39.2% were intermediate risk and 5.7% were very unfavorable. The CompOS model effectively categorized patients’ short- and longterm risks, identifying those at high risk for major complications and poor overall survival. According to the researchers, the model showed good performance in both test and validation cohorts, with areas under the curve of 0.73 and 0.76, respectively.