Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumour rupture should be treated with long-term survival in mind, say the authors of an Australian study.

Clinicians from six Melbourne hospitals retrospectively examined outcomes for 33 patients presenting with HCC tumour rupture between 2007 and 2018, comparing each with three closely matched patients with the cancer whose tumours remained intact.

Patients with ruptured tumours had a numerically longer median survival than those who did not (1.7 years vs 1.3 years), the analysis showed, but the difference was not statistically significant.

For 79% of the patients with rupture, this was the event that led to the diagnosis of their carcinoma, the authors reported in the Medical Journal of Australia.