Several professional societies recommend hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) surveillance in high-risk patients including patients with cirrhosis from any etiology and subsets of noncirrhotic chronic hepatitis B virus infection. The efficacy of HCC surveillance to increase early detection and improve survival has been demonstrated in a large randomized controlled trial among hepatitis B virus patients and several cohort studies among those with cirrhosis. However, the effectiveness on HCC surveillance, when applied in clinical practice, is lower due to low utilization of HCC surveillance among at-risk patients, poorer test performance given operator dependency and differences in patient characteristics, and downstream process failures such as treatment delays. Interventions to increase surveillance utilization and improve surveillance test performance should improve surveillance effectiveness in the future.
A 27-year-old female patient currently taking oral contraceptives is referred to be seen after being found to have three adenomas, the largest being 4 cm. She is contemplating pregnancy in the future.
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