Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Nora Tang and Version 1 by Berend Beumer.
For patients with early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma, it is important to know whether liver transplantation offers a survival benefit over liver resection. Patients receiving transplantation often have different characteristics in terms of their cancer stage and liver function compared to those being resected. This makes a comparison of the two treatment modalities challenging. This article presents a critical appraisal of the currently available literature. We not only provide a summary of the main results of individual articles but also describe their strengths and weaknesses, the relationships among them, and their trends. As a result, we suggest the regression discontinuity design for future studies that uses thresholds of a treatment guideline to help ensure that the groups are more comparable.
hepatocellular carcinoma
liver resection
liver transplantation
survival
regression discontinuity
Milan criteria
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