Prophylactic Treatment of Hepatic Dysplastic Nodules in HBsAg Positive Patients

Hepatic dysplastic nodules (DNs) include high grade dysplastic nodules (HGDNs) and low grade dysplastic nodule (LGDNs), their incidences are high in patients with liver cirrhosis. Once diagnosed, all latest versions of the major guidelines recommend enhanced follow-up, and no treatment would be provided until the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is established during the follow-up. While on the other hand, mounting evidence shows that DNs have relatively high transition rate to progress to HCC. In 154 patients with chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis, Kobayashi et al. reported the annual transition rate of 20% for patients with HGDN and 10% for patients with LGDN. The 5-year cumulative transition rate from HGDN and LGDN was 80.8% and 30.2%, respectively. Even regenerative nodules (RNs) without dysplasia evolved into HCC in 12.4%.More recently, Sato et al. studied 68 large regenerative nodules (LRNs) and 20 DNs from 1,500 consecutive nodular lesions; the 50-month transition rate was 13.6% in LRNs and 40% in DNs. Earlier studies support these findings. Adenomatous polyps are accepted precursors to colorectal cancer (CRC) and removed to prevent cancer. Compared to the above transition rates, A recent cohort study estimated that the average annual transition rate from advanced adenoma to CRC in men was 3.1%,so the 5-year-transition rate was around 15%. Since the transition rate of hepatic DNs is much higher than the colorectal adenomatous polyps, is "enhanced follow-up" really the best choice of the treatment? So in this proposed clinical trial, we hypothesize that for hepatic DNs discovered in patients with chronic hepatitis B, early minimally-invasive ablation treatment will decrease the incidence of HCC. Recruited patients will be divided in to two groups randomly, in the "Observation group", patients will be followed-up and receive no therapy; while in the "Ablation group", the DNs will be ablated by minimally-invasive ablation therapies, including RFA, PEI, MWA, etc. All patients will be followed-up according to the AASLD guideline. Then the incidence of HCC of the two arms will be compared.