Sarcopenia Predicts Prognosis of Patients Undergoing Liver Resection for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Recently, several studies have investigated the impact of preoperative sarcopenia on the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after liver resection, but their conclusions are controversial. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic role of sarcopenia in HCC patients undergoing liver resection. PubMed, SinoMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Medline, and Web of Science databases were systematically searched for all published literature on the prognostic value of preoperative sarcopenia in HCC patients undergoing liver resection. Pooled hazard ratios (HR), odds ratios (OR) and weighted mean differences (WMD) of the 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were estimated using a fixed-effects or random-effects model. A total of 12 articles with 1,774 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that sarcopenia would increase postoperative complications (OR = 1.30, 95%CI 1.03 ∼ 1.65, P = 0.03), prolong hospital stay (SMD = 0.22, 95%CI 0.05 ∼ 0.39, P = 0.01), and also be associated with shorter overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.69, 95%CI 1.09 ∼ 2.62, P = 0.02) and worse disease free survival (DFS) (HR = 1.54, 95%CI 1.23 ∼ 1.93, P < 0.01). Sarcopenia has an adverse effect on the prognosis of HCC patients undergoing liver resection.

Acknowledgments

None.

Author Contributions

T.Z., L.Z., designed and conducted the research and analyzed data; extracted data were checked by H.Z.; T.Z., L.Z., J.Z. and Y.W. wrote the manuscript; H.Z. had primary responsibility for final content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data analyzed during this study can be found within the published article.

Ethical Approval

All patient data in the study were obtained from published studies and therefore did not require ethical approval.

Additional information

Funding

There are no funding sources to declare.