Fig. 4.

Changes in AFP level in eight patients with pretreatment AFP >1000 ng/mL. Time zero is the date of first down-staging treatment. Data were not shown for the patient excluded from OLT when microvascular invasion was found in the resection specimen. AFP was not repeated in another patient who died from accelerated liver failure shortly after down-staging treatment. Treatment failure was the eventual outcome in seven of eight patients. Only one patient had significant decrease in the AFP and initial response to down-staging, but was excluded from OLT due to psychosocial reasons.