Bo J, Peng H, LianHua Z, et al. - Researchers herein examined if intraprocedural intraarterial contrast enhanced ultrasound (IA-CEUS) could aid in making the prediction of tumor response (TR) after TACE (1–3 months) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients.

• A case-control study of consecutive patients receiving TACE.

• IA-CEUS was conducted prior to and after TACE.

• One–three months following TACE, postoperative contrast-enhanced liver MRI was conducted as the gold standard.

• Included were 44 patients with 61 lesions.

• Analysis supports the utility of intraprocedural IA-CEUS in predicting the TR in HCC patients after TACE.

• The risk factors suggested are a large lesion diameter, a larger dimension of non-enhancing area in superior mesenteric artery (SMA)-CEUS than the size in B-mode ultrasound preoperatively, presence of corona enhancement in hepatic artery (HA)-CEUS postoperatively, and decreased corona enhancement thickness (per centimeter) postoperatively.