Prognostic value of the albumin-bilirubin grade in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma: Validation in a Chinese cohort.

Aim: The prognostic value of the newly raised objective liver function assessment tool, the albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grade, in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma has not been fully validated. We aimed to compare the performance of ALBI grade with the specific Child-Pugh (C-P) score in predicting prognosis in this study.

Methods: The clinical data of 491 C-P class A patients who underwent liver resection as initial therapy from January 2000 to December 2007 in Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (Beijing, China) were retrospectively analyzed. The prognostic performances of ALBI and C-P score in predicting the short- and long-term clinical outcomes were compared.

Results: The ALBI score gained a significantly larger area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for predicting the occurrence of severe postoperative complications than that of C-P score. With a median follow-up of 57 months, the 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year overall survival rates of the patients were 92.1%, 65.8%, and 45.2%, respectively. Tumor number, tumor size, and ALBI grade were proved to be the independent prognostic factors for overall survival in the multivariate analysis. Prognostic performance was shown to be better for ALBI grade when it was compared to C-P score in terms of both the Akaike information criterion value and χ value of likelihood ratio test.

Conclusions: The ALBI grade, which was featured by simplicity and objectivity, gained a superior prognostic value than that of C-P grade in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who underwent liver resection. Future well-designed studies with larger sample sizes are warranted.