Figure 1.
Model of HCC prognosis combining clinical and genomic data. Stages follow the BCLC algorithm7. Circles represent an educated guess of the relative influence of each causality component in patient prognosis, at different stages of the disease. In patients with early tumors, survival is mostly determined by genomic data coded in non-tumoral cirrhotic tissue (“field effect”) since it determines risk of liver dysfunction and development of a de novo HCC. As cancer progresses, genomic data from the tumor (in grey) increases its prediction capacity since cancer-related death limits survival in patients with advanced disease.