From 2013 to 2016, CellSearch technology was used to detect the number of circulating tumor cells (CTC) in peripheral blood of hundreds of HCC patients undergoing liver cancer surgery during perioperative period. The analysis results confirmed that the level of CTC before and after surgery were significantly correlated with overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) of patients. CTC level changed before and after surgery, but there was no statistical difference. Preoperative CTC was more correlated with patients' disease-related clinical parameters, while postoperative CTC was an independent prognostic indicator of patients after surgery. In addition, the investigators' study found that CTC clusters level can be a new marker of tumor progression in HCC patients.~Based on the above data, the investigators will perform retrospective analysis to compare the relationship between CTC level and clinical indicators of HCC patients. Participants were divided into groups according to pathological type, differentiation degree, clinical stage, invasion degree, recurrence and metastasis of tumors. Combined with immunohistochemistry and quantitative PCR results, the correlation of CTC in tumor genesis, pathological model, degree of differentiation, tumor stage, invasion, metastasis and expression of other tumor markers was studied.
The investigators examined circulating tumor cells (CTC) in the perioperative peripheral blood of hundreds of HCC patients undergoing liver cancer surgery using CellSearch technology between 2013 and 2016. Although the investigators have done a preliminary study of the above data and published some results, the previous study was only a basic analysis. Now the investigators plan to carry out further in-depth analysis of these data, including hospitalization data, follow-up results, surgical tumors and blood specimens, and make full use of biostatistics, molecular biology, pathology and other related techniques to elucidate the association between the levels of CTC or CTC clusters and patients' disease during the perioperative period, and to explore the molecular basis of CTC production in hepatocellular carcinoma.