This treatment aims to prolong survival while maintaining the best possible quality of life. Other patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma may participate in clinical studies for new treatment modalities or substances, respectively. One substance which has been discussed controversially in the last years is octreotide. free copy Somatostatin and its synthetic analogues, octreotide and lanreotide are potentially active against HCC due to their antiproliferative and apoptosis-inducing activity; in addition HCC has been shown to overexpress somatostatin receptors on the cell surface [7-10]. Several years ago Kouroumalis et al [11] published a randomized controlled trial which showed a significantly improved survival in patients with inoperable hepatocellular carcinoma treated with octreotide as compared to placebo (13.

0 versus 4.0 months). In addition, a second randomized placebo-controlled trial [12] showed an improved survival (49.0 versus 28.0 weeks) and quality of life in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma treated with long-acting octreotide. In contrast, Yuen et al [13] did not find a survival benefit of octreotide-monotherapy in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. Similarly, a large German study [14] reported an equally poor median survival in the treatment group (4.7 months) and the control group (5.3 months), respectively. It is interesting to note that in the two negative studies [13,14] the median survival of octreotide treated patients and the control group was extremely poor making it difficult to show any possible influence of octreotide treatment on survival.

In contrast, in the two positive studies [11,12] survival even in the placebo arms was considerably longer suggesting differences in patient selection. Due to these divergent study results concerning the influence of octreotide on survival we decided to analyze retrospectively the survival of our patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and octreotide monotherapy and Drug_discovery compared it to stage-matched patients who received either TACE, multimodal therapy or palliative care. Patients and methods Patient characteristics The charts of all patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) seen at the department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Medical University of Vienna from 1992 to 2004 were reviewed for this retrospective study. At the time of diagnosis 95 of these patients were in BCLC [2] stage A or B and received either TACE, multimodal therapy, long-acting octreotide [Sandostatin LAR] or palliative care. Stage A patients receiving that treatment modalities declined other treatment options such as liver transplantation or resection or were not candidates for this procedures due to older age or concomitant diseases.