Small hepatocellular carcinoma: current and future approaches

Over 3 decades have passed since the first report of small hepatocellular carcinoma (SHCC), which has been confirmed as one of the most significant prognostic factors. Obviously, it is indeed very important to know when an early SHCC will become more aggressive and lead to worse clinical outcome once it grows beyond a critical size. However, so far, no consensus has been achieved on the size criterion for SHCC among different authors or different clinical practice guidelines that have been used worldwide, although there are currently numerous cutoff values for tumor size used to define SHCC, including 5, 3 and 2 cm in diameter, etc. Herein, based on our current understanding concerning the pathobiological features of SHCC, we briefly review the history of SHCC study, analyze the advantages and limitations of the above criteria for SHCC, and discuss the pathobiological characteristics as well as the clinical significance of SHCC.