Table 6.

Variables that were most commonly found to be significant predictors of death assessed in 15 ‘good’ quality studies^*

Variable	No. of good studies in which variable was among the first significant ones	No. of good studies evaluating the variable	% of studies in which variable was among the first five/total studies
Child–Pugh class	8	11	73
AFP	8	10	80
Portal vein thrombosis	5	7	71
CLIP score	4	5	80
Tumour size	4	7	57

^*Good quality studies included all the four major quality criteria [relevant baseline data shown, number of deaths reported, patients were included consecutively and ratio of number of deaths/number of variables >10 (i.e. no overfitting)].

AFP, α-foetoprotein; CLIP, Cancer of the Liver Italian Program.