Liu KC, lv WF, Lu D, et al. - Findings demonstrate potential efficacy and safety of drug-eluting bead-transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (DEB-TACE) in treating conventional TACE (c-TACE)-refractory advanced liver cancer.

• A retrospective analysis of DEB-TACE for 41 hepatocellular carcinoma nodules in 30 patients who were refractory to c-TACE according to tumor response.

• At 4 weeks post-DEB-TACE, objective response rate was 60.98% and disease control rate was 95.12%; these estimates were 63.41% and 92.68% at 8 weeks, respectively.

• Median time of disease advancement was 4.60 ± 0.23 months.

• At 2– 6 weeks post-operation, there was continuous reduction in alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), and AFP at 4 weeks was significantly lower vs that at 2 weeks.

• Patients well-tolerated adverse reactions, there were no grade 4 adverse reactions.

• Within 6 weeks, no deterioration occurred in the albumin-bilirubin score.