Li et al. BMC Cancer 2010, 10:535 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/10/535 Table 2 Univariate analysis of prognostic factors by log- rank test Table 2: Univariate analysis of prognostic factors by log- rank test (Continued) Cases 1y-OS (%) 3y-OS (%) 5y-OS (%) Variable Gender Female Male Age (years) ≤48 >48 HBsAg Negative Positive HCVAb Negative Positive ALB (g/L) ≤35 >35 TBIL (μmol/L) ≤20 >20 PT (s) ≤13.5 >13.5 ICGR15 (%) ≤10 >10 AFP (μg/L) ≤25 >25 Child-Pugh A B MELD ≤7 >7 Cirrhosis No Yes Tumor size(cm) ≤5 >5 Variable Tumor number Solitary Multiple Tumor location Unilobar Bilobar Tumor encapsulation Yes No 31.8 25.9 22.9 29.6 37.6 23.2 27.3 22.0 7.7 27.7 29.3 28.0 32.9 24.6 26.7 28.2 34.3 25.8 27.4 18.8 24.7 32.6 39.5 23.5 33.3 23.1 27.2 21.4 26.1 17.0 18.2 15.9 13.7 18.3 18.8 14.9 18.2 12.9 0.0 17.3 16.0 14.3 22.3 14.4 17.8 19.4 20.5 16.0 16.5 12.5 13.9 20.7 26.6 13.8 21.0 14.5 5y-OS (%) 23.3 12.5 17.3 10.0 18.1 12.0 P 0.913 0.079 0.269 0.380 0.004 0.879 0.185 0.423 0.112 0.275 0.243 0.028 0.278 P 0.101 0.126 0.093 22 276 146 152 41 257 280 18 37 261 204 94 148 150 155 143 48 250 260 38 169 129 57 241 108 190 255 43 87 211 45.5 59.1 54.7 60.5 58.7 56.5 55.2 47.5 42.3 59.6 62.8 58.0 62.0 57.0 52.2 61.7 63.2 56.0 59.4 50.0 58.0 57.2 61.0 57.8 59.7 57.8 52.7 45.2 54.1 44.1 35 66.0 263 56.0 Cases 1y-OS (%) 31.0 23.5 3y-OS (%) Page 5 of 9 0.117 <0.001 0.197 0.295 0.201 0.062 0.140 0.488 0.724 0.923 16.7 11.0 19.6 0.0 16.0 12.4 18.4 13.6 12.7 17.9 15.2 18.9 21.5 12.9 17.6 14.4 16.4 13.2 15.5 15.2 Microvascular invasion No Yes Major vascular invasion No Yes Invasion of adjacent organs No Yes Perforation of visceral peritoneum No Yes Resection margin(mm) 0 >0 Resection extent Major Minor Blood loss(L) ≤0.8 >0.8 Blood transfusion No Yes Previous TACE No Yes Postoperative adjuvant TACE No Yes 111 187 237 61 219 69 220 78 188 110 217 81 163 135 142 157 282 16 222 76 56.5 48.1 65.2 29.7 59.9 56.3 60.1 53.8 49.3 58.4 54.7 67.9 62.8 52.9 59.0 57.9 57.3 48.4 61.7 53.2 24.0 19.4 32.2 0.0 27.7 17.0 26.9 21.0 20.8 26.1 23.5 28.0 30.5 21.2 26.3 26.6 27.1 21.3 28.6 23.0 The issue whether HCC with major vascular invasion is correctly classified was first raised by Poon et al. In their series, patients with major vascular invasion had significantly worse long-term survival compared with the other three categories of stage IVA HCC in the pre- vious version of the TNM classification [7]. In a multi- center study which was the basis of the current TNM staging system, Vauthey et al also showed that the survi- val of patients with multiple bilobar tumors or invasion of adjacent organs was better than patients with tumors with major vascular invasion [6]. However, a major lim- itation of their study is that the number of patients with invasion of adjacent organs was relatively small (n = 11, or 2% of the total cohort). Thus, AJCC/UICC decided not to change the definition of pT4 for the 2002 version of the TNM classification. In our present study, major vascular invasion showed the strongest impact on prog- nosis both in univariate and multivariate analyses.