A case of hepatocellular carcinoma relapsed 44 months after living donor liver transplantation, with a 50-month survival thereafter by multimodal treatments

Abstract

Here we report a case of 34 years old female with chronic hepatitis B, who had undergone extended left lobectomy for a huge hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with a diameter of 12 cm when she was 25 years old. The HCC recurred in the following year, and a living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) was performed at 27 years of age. Recurrent tumors were revealed in the graft at 44 months after LDLT. Though percutaneous treatments were done repeatedly, many uncontrollable tumors appeared in succession. Posterior-segmentectomy and partial resection of anterior-segment were performed at 32 years of age. Recurrent tumors appeared one after another despite those intensive therapies, and the patient expired 94 months after LDLT; 50 months after the post-LDLT recurrence. To our knowledge, this is the first case of recurrent HCCs appearing more than 3 years after LDLT and then undergoing a graft segmentectomy.