To illustrate whether the prognostic significance of telomere length was independent of clinical variables, clinicopathologic features showing significance by univariate analysis were adopted as covariates when performing multivariate Cox proportional hazard analyses (Table 2 and supplementary material, Tables S3 and S4). Shortened telomeres in HCC cells were an independent prognostic factor for both reduced overall survival (OS) and time to recurrence (TTR). Patients with shorter telomeres harbored a 2.555‐fold higher risk of death (HR 2.555; 95% CI 1.616–4.039, p < 0.001) and were more likely to suffer from relapse (HR 1.755; 95% CI 1.168–2.637, p = 0.007) than patients with longer telomeres. For telomere length in CAFs, multivariate analysis also revealed significant differences in OS and TTR between the two groups. In addition, the combination of shorter telomere in tumor cells and CAFs was an independent prognostic factor for both OS and TTR by multivariate analysis.